Chapter 5: Two Girls in a House With No One Good Left Inside
Harmon stepped into the hallway and spoke into his radio in a voice too low for me to hear the words.
Patricia moved to my side without being asked.
"They'll check," she said.
"They'll go right now."
"She was there," I said.
"My mother-in-law was at the hospital with us.
She came in the car." I pressed my hand flat against the mattress.
"Who is with my daughters?"
"The officers will find out."
"They're four and two.
My oldest is afraid of strangers.
She won't open the door for anyone she doesn't know."
Patricia didn't tell me it would be fine.
I was grateful for that.
Harmon came back in four minutes.
It felt like forty.
"Two officers are at the residence," he said.
"The door was locked.
A neighbor — woman next door — she had a key.
Said your daughter gave it to her three months ago and told her to keep it."
I stared at him.
"My daughter is four."
"The neighbor said your daughter came to the fence one morning and pushed the key through a gap.
Didn't say anything.
Just pushed it through and went back inside." Harmon sat down.
"The neighbor kept it.
She said she didn't know what to do with it, but she couldn't throw it away."
My four-year-old daughter had found a way to ask for help before I had.
The thought broke something open in my chest that I hadn't known was sealed.
"Are they safe?" I managed.
"Both girls are with the neighbor now.
Officers are on site." He paused.
"Your oldest asked if you were coming home.
The officer told her yes."
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Patricia put her hand on my shoulder and left it there.
Harmon gave me a moment.
Then he opened a folder.
"I need to show you something," he said.
"Carol's unit has been building a file on your mother-in-law for fourteen months.
What you brought in today — the recordings — they fill in gaps we couldn't close." He laid a single printed page on the bed.
"This is a list of addresses.
Residences connected to her over the past six years.
Three different families.
Three different women."
I looked at the list.
The addresses were in three different states.
"She moves them," I said.
"We believe so.
Once a situation becomes visible — a hospital visit, a neighbor complaint, a school flag — the family relocates." He tapped the page.
"You've been in this house eleven months."
Eleven months.
I thought about the loose nail near the steps.
The dry grass.
The marks in the dirt.
I had memorized those details to survive each morning, and without knowing it, I had also been counting down to the moment they would have moved us again.
"She was already looking at rentals," I said.
"I saw a browser tab on her laptop two weeks ago.
I didn't understand what it meant."
Harmon wrote that down.
"Your recordings give us dates, voices, and a pattern," he said.
"That's enough to hold them both.
But I need you to be prepared for what comes next." He looked at me steadily.
"He will say you fabricated everything.
She will say you were unstable, that the pregnancy made you irrational.
They will have a story ready.
They've done this before."
"I know," I said.
"That's why I kept recording."
He nodded once.
"Then let's make sure every file is preserved.
Can you unlock the phone for me?"
I reached for it.
My hand had stopped shaking.
In the hallway, I heard my husband's voice again — louder this time, insisting on something.
Then another voice, flat and official, cutting him off.
May you like
Then quiet.
The kind of quiet that meant a door had been closed that he couldn't open from his side.
