Chapter 4 - The Photograph That Lied
Naomi Brooks, the family lawyer Tessa found for me, didn't waste time on sympathy. She spread my phone photos across her desk at eight the next morning and asked me to explain each one in order.
"Don't tell me what you think Ryan planned," she said. "Tell me what happened, what you saw, and who can verify it."
I told her about the meals. The petition. The money I'd transferred. The way Ryan had looked at his plate while Lily begged for food.
Naomi read the image of the trust clause and frowned. "This doesn't give anybody three-point-eight million dollars. It suggests they want a court order that would make controlling her care and requesting trust payments easier. That's still serious. We'll need the actual trust instrument."
She called the trustee listed on the cover sheet, a woman named Judith Vale, and requested an urgent meeting. Then she helped me prepare a response to Ryan's filing and an application for temporary orders protecting Lily while the allegations were examined.
At noon, an investigator named Erin Desai came to Tessa's house. I showed her the medical discharge papers and made Lily lunch while we talked. Lily carried her cheese sandwich to the table, paused, and asked, "Mine?"
"Every bite," I told her.
Erin didn't promise to believe me. She watched Lily, asked about our living arrangements, and requested the names of people who had cared for her. Before leaving, she showed me a photograph Ryan had provided.
It showed Lily alone on the kitchen floor beside an overturned bowl. In the corner stood a woman's shoe that looked exactly like mine.
"That's not my kitchen," I said.
"Are you certain?"
I pointed to the cabinet handle: a twisted brass design. Diane had installed those handles last month. My apartment had plain white drawers. I'd also left a spare pair of work shoes in Diane's hallway closet.
Erin leaned closer. "Then how did they get a photograph of your shoes in his mother's house?"
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The answer was waiting in the caption beneath the image: MOTHER RETURNED CHILD WITHOUT FEEDING HER.
Someone had dressed a staged photograph as proof against me.
