Chapter 4 - No More Quiet Answers
At eight the next morning, a detective named Leah Park met me and Rose at the station. I reported the burn incident, gave her the doctor's paperwork, and showed her both messages. A child protection worker had already been notified through the clinic.
"Let Wren talk to someone trained to interview children," Detective Park said. "Don't rehearse her answers. Right now she needs stability more than questions."
I nodded, ashamed of how badly I wanted to ask Wren everything myself.
Rose described what she'd seen. She didn't embellish. When she couldn't remember whether Celia used one hand or two to lift the pot, she said so.
"That makes a difference," Park told her. "Thank you for separating what you witnessed from what you were told."
Outside, Rose said, "I expected you to fire me."
"I should have listened a long time ago."
"I wasn't asking you to trust me instead of your wife," she replied. "I was asking you to look at your daughter."
I called a family lawyer, Priya Shah, who arranged an urgent consultation about the house and safe contact. Priya's first instruction was blunt: "Don't return alone to confront them. Preserve what you have. Keep Wren somewhere secure."
That afternoon, I checked our home-security account. The kitchen camera had been disabled weeks earlier. The hall camera, however, had captured someone entering the reading room at 11:46 p.m. the night before Wren was hurt.
It was my mother. She carried a blue folder.
Celia followed her, turning once to check the hallway.
I sent the file to Park and Priya.
An email notification popped up as I closed the app: HOME VIDEO HISTORY CLEARED BY ACCOUNT ADMINISTRATOR.
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Administrator: Elaine Ellis.
I stared at the screen. My mother hadn't merely been hiding what happened in that kitchen. She'd been trying to erase something that happened before it.
