Chapter 5 - Ryan Finally Looked Back
Ryan didn’t defend her after that.
That almost made me angrier.
“Now you believe me?” I asked.
He flinched.
“I believe something is very wrong.”
“Something?”
“Emma—”
“She put our three-week-old baby in a toilet and pressed the lid down.”
“I know what you said you saw.”
I stared at him until he stopped talking.
Then I packed Lily’s diaper bag.
“Where are you going?”
“My sister’s.”
“Emma, please.”
“No. You don’t get to ask me for patience while you decide how much danger qualifies as danger.”
That finally broke something in him.
He sat down hard.
“My father loved Linda,” he said quietly. “For twelve years, she took care of him. When he got sick, she handled everything. Medications. Doctors. Bills. I trusted her because he trusted her.”
“And because trusting her was easier than believing me.”
He nodded.
It was the first honest thing he had said all night.
Before I left, Detective Harper stopped me in the hotel hallway.
“We pulled the emergency call,” she said.
“Linda’s 911 call?”
“Yes.”
“When did she make it?”
Harper handed me headphones.
Linda’s voice came through calm and breathless.
“My daughter-in-law is having some kind of breakdown. There’s a newborn in the house. Please hurry.”
My knees weakened.
The dispatcher asked whether anyone was hurt.
Linda answered, “Not yet.”
I ripped off the headphones.
“What time?”
Harper looked at me carefully.
“The call began four minutes before you entered the bathroom.”
Ryan had followed us into the hall. He heard every word.
His face drained of color.
Linda hadn’t called for help after something went wrong.
She had called to establish the story before it happened.
Then Harper said, “There’s one more thing. She didn’t call from her own phone.”
“Whose?” I asked.
May you like
Harper looked at Ryan.
“Yours.”
