Chapter 2 - The Accusation
For several seconds, I couldn't understand the sentence.
“What I did?”
The investigator's name was Dana Mercer. She looked to be in her forties, with tired eyes and the calm expression of someone who had learned not to react before hearing every side of a story.
“Your sister says Paige was healthy when she left the baby with you.”
I stared at her.
“That isn't true.”
“She says there was no visible injury.”
“Because someone covered it with makeup.”
Dana didn't answer.
The doctor beside her did.
“Paige has a fracture of the left femur.”
The hallway seemed to tilt beneath me.
“A fracture?”
“She also has bruising around the hip.”
I grabbed the back of the chair.
Paige was six months old.
She couldn't stand.
She couldn't crawl properly yet.
She couldn't climb anything or fall down stairs.
“How does a baby get that?”
“That,” Dana said carefully, “is what we're trying to establish.”
I suddenly understood why she was looking at me that way.
Kate had accused me.
My own sister had received a message saying her daughter was injured and instead of racing to the hospital, she had apparently called authorities and told them I had done it.
“I've had Paige for less than an hour.”
“We know.”
“I took her here.”
“We know that too.”
“She was already hurting when they brought her.”
Dana studied me.
“Can you prove that?”
The question terrified me because the answer should have been easy.
Then I remembered something.
“My doorbell camera.”
Dana's expression changed.
“It records?”
“Yes. Kate carried Paige inside. Maybe it caught something.”
Dana immediately asked me not to delete or alter anything.
I opened the security app with shaking fingers.
There was Kate at 9:08 that morning, standing on my porch with Paige against her chest.
Her husband, Ryan, was behind her carrying the diaper bag.
At first, nothing seemed unusual.
Then Dana leaned closer.
“Play that again.”
I did.
Kate shifted Paige from one arm to the other.
Paige's right leg kicked freely.
Her left leg hung strangely still.
Then Ryan reached toward the baby.
Paige jerked and cried.
Kate immediately turned away from him.
All three of us went silent.
“That doesn't prove how the injury happened,” Dana said, “but it establishes that the child appeared uncomfortable before entering your home.”
Relief nearly knocked me over.
Then another voice came from the hallway.
“Where is my daughter?”
Kate.
She hurried toward us, but something about her looked wrong. Her face was pale, yet there were no tears. Ryan followed several steps behind her.
I expected my sister to embrace me.
Instead, she stopped ten feet away.
“You hurt her.”
The words landed harder than a slap.
“What?”
“I trusted you.”
“Kate, Paige was injured before you got to my house.”
Ryan put an arm around my sister.
“Don't engage with her.”
I looked at him.
His voice was calm.
Too calm.
Kate started crying.
“She was fine when we left.”
Dana stepped between us.
“Mrs. Collins, we're going to speak separately.”
Ryan immediately said, “I'm staying with my wife.”
“No,” Dana replied. “You aren't.”
Something flashed across his face.
It disappeared almost instantly.
But I saw it.
So did Dana.
Kate was taken down one hallway. Ryan went down another.
I was left beside the trauma-room doors wondering how my family had transformed into strangers in less than two hours.
Twenty minutes later, a nurse allowed me to see Paige.
The tiny baby lay beneath a pale hospital blanket with her leg immobilized. Her cheeks were wet. Her eyelids fluttered from exhaustion.
I sat beside her and whispered, “I'm here.”
Her fingers closed weakly around mine.
That nearly broke me.
Dana entered a few minutes later.
She closed the door.
“Your sister says she dressed Paige this morning.”
My heart started pounding.
“Then she saw the bruise.”
“That's what I asked her.”
“And?”
“She says there wasn't one.”
I stared at Dana.
“What about the makeup?”
“Kate says she doesn't know anything about it.”
“That's impossible.”
“Maybe.”
That word bothered me.
“Maybe?”
Dana pulled a chair closer.
“Ryan says you keep cosmetics in the guest bathroom.”
I almost laughed because the allegation was so ridiculous.
“I do. So what?”
“He says you could have applied the concealer.”
“After breaking Paige's leg?”
“I didn't say I believed him.”
That stopped me.
Dana leaned forward.
“Ally, people usually lie to make a story simpler. Your sister and her husband are doing the opposite. They're adding details nobody asked for.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I'm interested.”
Before I could respond, the doctor returned carrying a tablet.
Her face was even more serious than before.
“We completed the full skeletal survey.”
I looked between them.
“Why?”
“Because when an infant presents with an unexplained fracture, we examine for other injuries.”
Something cold moved through my chest.
The doctor sat beside me.
“The femur fracture isn't Paige's only injury.”
I stopped breathing.
“She has two healing rib fractures.”
“No.”
“They aren't recent.”
“How old?”
“We can't date them precisely, but they predate today.”
My eyes filled with tears.
Someone had hurt Paige before.
Maybe more than once.
Dana stood.
The investigation had just changed.
So had everything I believed about my sister's marriage.
Then the doctor said, “There's something else.”
She turned the tablet toward us.
On the screen was an X-ray.
I couldn't understand what I was looking at.
Dana apparently could.
Her eyes narrowed.
The doctor pointed toward a faint line near Paige's right wrist.
“This fracture has already begun healing.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
Three injuries.
Three different locations.
And at least two different times.
Dana looked toward the closed door.
“Your sister told me Paige has never been injured before.”
I whispered, “Then somebody's lying.”
Dana nodded.
“Yes.”
My phone vibrated.
A text from Kate.
I opened it.
There were only five words.
Please don't tell them everything.
I stared at the screen.
Then another message appeared.
Ryan checks my phone. Delete this.
And suddenly I understood something that frightened me even more than the X-rays.
May you like
Kate wasn't protecting herself from me.
She was afraid of her husband.
