Chapter 5 - The Man Who Came at Night
"What man?" I asked.
Lily was already pulling her blanket over her chin. I stopped myself. No more questions. I kissed her forehead and promised the hallway light would stay on.
I called Tessa in the morning and repeated Lily's words exactly, without guessing. The worker thanked me for not pressing her and said the interview team would handle it.
Noah woke crying before sunrise. For a moment Lily leaped out of bed and ran toward the kitchen, as if the baby were her job. When I picked him up myself, she stared.
"You can sleep," I told her. "You're his sister, not his parent."
"But Vanessa says if he cries, people get mad."
"Nobody here is mad at a baby for crying."
Lily kept watching until Noah settled. That was when I understood how deeply fear had been taught to her.
Meanwhile Ethan finally searched his email for the invoices he'd signed. One message came from a company called BrightPath Family Services. He opened a PDF and found a monthly charge for "intensive home behavior monitoring." It listed Lily as the client and Vanessa as the supervising caregiver.
He called the phone number. The receptionist said BrightPath did not provide in-home services and had no record of Lily Cole.
"Then why am I paying you?" he demanded.
The receptionist went silent. "Sir, our billing department needs to call you back."
Shah later showed him bank records indicating that the payments had actually gone to a different entity with a similar name. Its registered agent was a woman named Paige Mercer.
"Who's Paige?" the detective asked.
Ethan closed his eyes. "Vanessa's sister. She told me she was a child-development specialist."
In one of the files he had signed, the alleged specialist had recommended residential placement for Lily because she was supposedly a danger to Noah.
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Ethan had approved the document with a digital signature. He claimed he'd never read the recommendation.
Then Shah opened another page and asked, "Did you also approve the transfer of eighty-four thousand dollars from your daughter's account?"
