Chapter 2 - WHAT THE CAMERA SAW
My mother sat down so suddenly the plastic hospital chair scraped across the floor.
Rebecca remained near the doorway, both hands wrapped around herself as if she were cold.
Detective Alvarez didn’t touch the laptop.
He gave Mom several seconds.
She stared at the paused security footage like she expected reality to rearrange itself if she waited long enough.
It didn’t.
“Play it,” I whispered.
Mom looked at me.
I had tubes in my arm, stitches along my hairline, a brace around two fractured ribs, and bruising that had turned from purple to sick yellow beneath my eyes.
For the first time since I woke up, she actually looked at what had been done to me.
Alvarez pressed play.
The video came from our neighbors, the Whitmans, whose camera pointed toward the alley between our houses.
The image wasn’t perfect, but the garage door had been open three feet because Dad’s motorcycle exhaust made the room smell like gasoline.
Through that opening, shapes moved.
My voice came first.
“You’re going to tell her.”
Dad answered.
“I’m telling you this one time. Delete the video.”
“No.”
Then came the slap.
Mom flinched.
Rebecca covered her mouth.
The footage continued.
My scream.
Dad shouting.
A crash.
Another scream.
Then my father’s voice again.
“You stupid little—”
Alvarez paused it.
“You don’t have to watch everything today.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Emily.”
“I want to see.”
He continued.
Mom began crying silently.
The camera couldn’t show every strike, but the audio made imagination unnecessary.
My father hit me repeatedly while demanding my phone.
I heard myself call for Mom.
That hurt worse than everything else.
Finally, another voice appeared.
A woman.
Mrs. Whitman.
“Richard! Stop!”
Dad stumbled into view.
His shirt was stained.
Mrs. Whitman was standing near her fence, phone raised.
Dad shouted at her.
“She fell!”
Mrs. Whitman answered, “I watched you hit her.”
Then Dad said the sentence that destroyed his story.
“She wouldn’t stop telling the truth!”
Silence filled my hospital room.
Alvarez closed the laptop.
Mom kept staring at the black screen.
“Where is Richard?” she asked.
It was the first time since waking that I heard her use Dad’s first name.
“In custody,” Alvarez said.
Mom’s head lifted.
“For what?”
“Aggravated assault initially. Charges may change depending on the prosecutor and Miss Carter’s medical condition.”
“My medical condition?”
Alvarez looked at me.
“The injuries were severe.”
I already knew some of them.
Concussion.
Three broken ribs.
Fractured cheekbone.
Internal bleeding that required surgery.
But I hadn’t understood how close I had come to dying.
My doctor had waited until I was stable enough to hear it.
Alvarez did not soften it.
“You were found unconscious with significant head trauma. Paramedics lost your pulse once during transport.”
Mom made a sound I had never heard before.
She bent forward and pressed both hands over her face.
Rebecca began crying again.
I looked at her.
“Why are you here?”
Mom’s head snapped up.
Rebecca looked as though I had struck her.
“Emily—”
“You were at the motel.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
She closed her eyes.
“Seven months.”
Mom stopped crying.
Seven months.
Not one night.
Not one terrible mistake.
Seven months of lunches, phone calls, motel rooms, excuses, and family dinners where Rebecca sat across from my mother pretending to be her friend.
Mom stood.
Rebecca backed against the wall.
“You came to my house,” Mom whispered.
“Susan—”
“You helped me decorate his birthday cake.”
“I know.”
“You drove me to my mammogram.”
Rebecca’s shoulders shook.
“I know.”
“You sat beside me while I cried because I thought Richard was pulling away from me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom laughed once.
It was an awful sound.
“You knew why.”
Rebecca nodded.
Mom crossed the room so quickly the officer moved between them.
“I trusted you.”
“Susan, please.”
“Get out.”
“I came because—”
“GET OUT!”
A nurse appeared outside.
Rebecca flinched and turned away.
But before she left, she faced me.
“There’s something else you need to know.”
I stared at her.
“Richard didn’t just come after you because of the affair.”
Alvarez stiffened.
“What do you mean?”
Rebecca swallowed.
“He believed Emily had copied something else from his phone.”
Dad had grabbed my phone when I confronted him, but I hadn’t copied anything.
“I don’t understand.”
Rebecca looked at Alvarez.
“He’s been moving money.”
Mom’s face changed again.
“What money?”
“Company money.”
Our family business, Carter Development, employed forty-three people.
Dad had rebuilt it over twenty years.
Mom technically owned thirty percent.
My brother, Ethan, worked there.
Rebecca’s husband had invested in it.
“What are you talking about?” Mom asked.
Rebecca’s voice dropped.
“I saw accounts. Transfers. Payments to companies that don’t exist.”
Alvarez pulled out a notebook.
“How do you know?”
“Because Richard asked me to help him hide them.”
The room became absolutely still.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Rebecca looked at me.
“I refused.”
“Yet you kept sleeping with him.”
Her face folded with shame.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I kept telling myself I could leave.”
“That’s convenient.”
“I know.”
Mom turned toward the window.
Rebecca continued.
“Two nights before Emily was attacked, Richard told me someone had been looking at his laptop.”
Mom looked back.
“Who?”
“I thought Ethan.”
My brother.
I hadn’t seen him since waking.
“Where is Ethan?” I asked.
Nobody answered.
I looked at Mom.
“Where is my brother?”
She wiped her face.
“He left.”
“What do you mean, left?”
“He packed a bag the morning after you were hospitalized.”
My heart sank.
“Has anyone talked to him?”
“His phone is off.”
Alvarez interrupted.
“We’re attempting to locate him.”
Fear crawled beneath my skin.
Dad had nearly killed me over a twenty-six-second affair video.
If he believed Ethan knew about missing money, what had he done to him?
Rebecca suddenly stepped toward the bedside table.
She stopped when the officer shifted.
“I have something.”
From her purse, she removed a key.
A small brass storage-unit key.
“Richard gave me this three months ago,” she said.
“He told me if anything ever happened, I was supposed to empty the unit before Susan or the police found it.”
Alvarez took it.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because after Emily was hurt, I got scared.”
“What’s in it?”
“I don’t know.”
Dad’s voice replayed inside my head.
She wouldn’t stop telling the truth.
I suddenly understood.
The affair might have started everything.
But it wasn’t the only truth Dad was afraid of.
Three hours later, Mom sat beside my hospital bed while Rebecca gave her statement downstairs.
Neither of us spoke.
Finally, Mom reached toward my hand.
I pulled mine away.
She froze.
“Emily.”
“I heard you.”
Her eyes filled.
“I was in shock.”
“You said you’d bury me before you believed me.”
“I know.”
“You looked at my face.”
She cried silently.
“You saw what he did, and you still chose him.”
“I thought—”
“You didn’t think.”
She nodded.
“No.”
For once, she didn’t defend herself.
That helped.
A little.
“I am so sorry.”
I looked out the window.
Cars moved along the highway below.
Normal people going normal places.
“I don’t know what to do with your apology yet.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
That answer surprised me.
Then Detective Alvarez returned.
He wasn’t alone.
A second detective carried a cardboard evidence box.
“We opened the storage unit,” Alvarez said.
“What was inside?”
“Financial records. Several phones. Cash.”
“How much?”
“Approximately four hundred thousand dollars.”
Mom stood.
“My God.”
“And we found something else.”
He removed a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a red baseball cap.
Ethan’s.
I recognized the white stitching immediately.
Mom grabbed the bedrail.
“Why was that there?”
Alvarez’s expression remained controlled, but I could tell he was choosing his words carefully.
“We don’t know.”
Then he placed a photograph on the table.
It showed the storage-unit floor.
Beside Ethan’s cap was a dark stain.
My stomach turned.
“Is that blood?”
“We’re testing it.”
Mom began shaking.
I stared at the picture.
Dad was already in jail.
But suddenly that didn’t make me feel safe.
May you like
Because if the blood belonged to Ethan, our family’s nightmare had started long before my father raised his fist against me.
And somewhere out there, my brother might be paying for a secret I didn’t even know existed.
