Chapter 10 - THE BASEMENT VIDEO
Vanessa hung up before Daniel could answer.
For a long moment, nobody moved.
Then Hannah said, “What happened in the basement?”
“Last winter,” he said slowly, “you came to pick Sophie up and we argued.”
“I remember.”
“You were angry.”
“You changed the holiday schedule without telling me.”
“You shoved a box off a shelf.”
Hannah stared at him. “I knocked it over with my elbow.”
“There was a camera.”
Tessa’s voice sharpened. “What does the video show?”
“I don’t know.”
Hannah almost laughed. “Of course you don’t.”
Daniel stood. “I never watched it.”
Tessa cut in. “Then Vanessa is threatening to use selectively edited footage.”
Vanessa appeared remotely from her attorney’s office wearing pale blue and no makeup. She looked fragile.
Vanessa cried while describing herself as a stepmother “desperate to love a child who had been taught to reject her.”
Her attorney played a twelve-second basement clip.
Hannah’s voice shouted, “You don’t get to take my daughter from me!”
The video stopped.
The judge frowned.
Tessa stood. “Your Honor, we request the full recording.”
Vanessa’s attorney said the rest had been corrupted.
Then Tessa played the blue-room clip.
The courtroom changed.
Vanessa stopped crying.
The judge ordered no unsupervised contact between Vanessa and Sophie pending investigation. Daniel’s parenting time was temporarily supervised because he had allowed the conduct to continue and signed inaccurate declarations.
It was not victory.
Outside court, Vanessa approached Hannah despite her lawyer trying to stop her.
“You think you won?” she whispered.
Hannah stepped back. “Stay away from me.”
Vanessa smiled faintly. “Sophie already knows which mother Daddy chose.”
Daniel heard it.
But before he could respond, Tessa’s investigator came running down the courthouse steps.
“Hannah.”
He held up his phone.
“We found another family.”
May you like
“What family?”
“Vanessa did this before.”
