Chapter 9 - THE LAST VIDEO ON EMILY’S PHONEMark Hollis was arrested the following afternoon in South Carolina.
He had made it less than two hundred miles.
Federal agents tracked a cash withdrawal from an account he apparently believed investigators didn’t know existed.
Inside his motel room they found two pistols, $38,000 in cash, three burner phones—
and Emily’s phone.
The screen was cracked.
The device had been partially wiped.
But not completely.
Digital forensics recovered deleted files.
Messages.
Photos.
Voice memos.
And one video.
Seven minutes and forty-two seconds long.
Emily started recording shortly after escaping the basement.
She must have activated the camera while holding the phone at her side.
Much of the image showed floor and walls.
But the audio was clear.
We listened in a secure room.
Emily:
“Give me my father’s files.”
Derek:
“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“I understand exactly what you did.”
“You think police are going to care about accounting records from four years ago?”
“They’ll care about eleven million dollars.”
Silence.
That number stunned investigators.
Emily had already calculated it.
Derek spoke.
“Mom, tell her.”
Margaret:
“Emily, please. Think about what this does to everyone.”
Emily laughed bitterly.
“What Derek did?”
“What going public does.”
“So that’s still your answer.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
“Like what? Like I finally understand you?”
Footsteps.
Then Lily crying somewhere distant.
Emily’s voice softened immediately.
“Lily?”
Derek:
“Leave her out of this.”
“You grabbed her!”
“She wouldn’t answer me.”
“She is six!”
More movement.
Then Dad’s voice—broken from his stroke.
“Stop.”
The recording shifted.
Derek:
“Stay out of this, Arthur.”
A thud.
Emily screamed.
“You pushed him!”
Dad groaned.
Then rapid footsteps.
The image briefly lifted.
One frame captured Derek near the upstairs hallway.
The scratch on his face was already present—likely from Emily defending herself.
Margaret appeared behind him.
Emily said:
“I sent everything to a lawyer.”
Derek froze.
“You’re lying.”
“I sent enough.”
“Where?”
“You’ll find out when police do.”
“Emily.”
“Move.”
The phone shifted as she attempted to pass.
Derek grabbed her arm.
We could see his hand.
“Let go.”
“Tell me where the documents are.”
“Let go of me!”
Then Margaret said:
“Emily, just stop fighting!”
Everything happened in seconds.
The camera spun.
Derek held Emily’s wrist.
Emily pulled backward.
Margaret reached for Emily from behind.
Not Derek.
Margaret.
Her hand grabbed the back of Emily’s cardigan.
Emily twisted.
The fabric stretched.
Margaret pulled.
Emily lost balance.
There was a gasp.
The phone flew.
A crash.
Silence.
I stopped breathing.
Margaret had caused the fall.
Maybe not intentionally.
But she had grabbed Emily.
Pulled her backward.
Then came Derek’s voice.
“Emily?”
Footsteps.
“Oh God.”
Margaret began screaming.
“I didn’t mean—Emily! Emily!”
Derek:
“Mom, shut up.”
“She’s bleeding.”
“Shut up!”
“Call 911!”
“No.”
That one word echoed.
Derek had not pushed Emily.
But he made the decision that killed her.
The video continued.
Derek checking her breathing.
Margaret sobbing.
Then:
“She’s alive.”
Margaret:
“Then call someone!”
Derek:
“Not yet.”
After that, Derek began discussing what Emily had already sent.
He searched her phone.
Couldn’t unlock certain apps.
He called Calvin.
Margaret called separately minutes later.
They talked about moving Emily.
Staging the basement fall.
Deleting footage.
Then the recording stopped when someone picked up the phone.
The case was complete.
Not simple.
But complete.
Margaret had caused the physical fall while trying to restrain Emily.
Derek had prevented immediate help and orchestrated the cover-up.
Calvin Shaw had assisted.
Hollis had removed evidence and falsified reports.
Each person had made a choice.
A different choice.
A chain of choices.
And Emily died at the end of them.
The prosecutors met with me before announcing charges.
Derek faced murder based on his deliberate interference with lifesaving aid and related felony conduct, along with kidnapping, conspiracy, financial crimes, evidence tampering, and numerous fraud counts.
Margaret faced manslaughter-related charges, unlawful imprisonment, obstruction, conspiracy, and tampering.
Calvin faced an avalanche of charges.
Hollis faced federal and state charges for corruption, obstruction, evidence theft, conspiracy, and more.
I should have felt victorious.
I didn’t.
Justice is not resurrection.
There is no courtroom sentence that walks through your front door and says, “Sorry I’m late.”
That night, I took Lily home for the first time since the investigation reopened.
Police had released most of the house.
The basement door had been removed as evidence.
The hallway carpet was gone.
Parts of the place looked wounded.
Dad sat in his wheelchair near the living room window.
Lily climbed into my lap.
“Is Uncle Derek going away?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“A long time.”
“Grandma too?”
I hesitated.
“Yes.”
She looked down.
“Can I still love Grandma?”
That question nearly broke me.
“Yes.”
“Even if she did something bad?”
“Yes.”
Lily thought about it.
Then:
“Can I be mad too?”
“Yes.”
“At the same time?”
I kissed her hair.
“Especially at the same time.”
Children understand complicated emotions better than adults give them credit for.
She leaned against me.
“Do you still love Mommy?”
“More than anything.”
“Are you mad at her?”
I smiled sadly.
“A little.”
“For dying?”
“No.”
“For not telling me she was scared.”
Lily nodded as if that made perfect sense.
Then she reached into her pocket.
“Mommy told me another secret.”
My heart stopped.
“What secret?”
She climbed down and ran upstairs.
A minute later she returned carrying a children’s book.
The Secret Garden.
Emily had read it to her in pieces at bedtime.
Lily opened the back cover.
There, written in Emily’s handwriting, was a short message.
For Lily and Daddy: when the scary part is over, find the garden.
I stared at it.
“What garden?”
Lily smiled for the first time in days.
“Our garden.”
Backyard.
Emily’s vegetable beds.
Tomatoes.
Basil.
Sunflowers Lily planted every spring.
We went outside with Dad.
Lily led us to the old wooden planter box Emily had built beside the fence.
“Mommy buried something.”
“Did you help?”
She nodded.
“A treasure.”
Of course.
We dug carefully.
Six inches down, my shovel struck plastic.
A sealed storage container.
Inside was no criminal evidence.
No bank records.
No secrets about Derek.
Just us.
Photographs.
Lily’s hospital bracelet.
Our wedding invitation.
A napkin from the diner where Emily and I had our first date.
A terrible drawing I made of her on our honeymoon.
Letters.
One for Lily.
One for Dad.
One for me.
This letter wasn’t written because Emily feared dying.
It had been written a year earlier for our tenth anniversary.
She had planned a backyard treasure hunt.
Our anniversary was still three months away.
I opened mine.
Nathan,
If you found this before November, you cheated.
I laughed and cried at the same time.
Lily looked confused.
“She called me a cheater.”
Lily giggled.
It was the first laugh I had heard from my daughter since her mother died.
I kept reading.
Emily wrote about our first apartment.
The broken air conditioner.
The year we nearly went broke.
Dad teaching Lily to whistle.
The stupid coffee grinder.
Every ordinary thing I hadn’t understood was precious while it was happening.
At the bottom:
Whatever happens to us, please remember this: our life was never valuable because it was perfect. It was valuable because it was ours.
I sat in the dirt.
Dad placed his hand on my shoulder.
Lily crawled into my lap.
May you like
And for the first time since the funeral home, I allowed myself to think about something other than how Emily died.
I remembered how she lived.
