Chapter 3 - Ghosts in the Walls
The lawyer’s name was Vance. He didn't even bother introducing himself. He just handed Detective Ramirez a stack of papers.
“Habeas corpus, Detective. You have no grounds to hold my clients. The basement room was a storm shelter. The phone was dropped down the stairs years ago. The medical records are a clerical error.”
“A storm shelter with an exterior lock?” Ramirez fired back, his jaw tight. “And fake names at the hospital?”
“My clients are prominent members of this community. They use aliases for privacy. As for the child, they have legal guardianship. I suggest you release them, or the civil suit will bankrupt this department.”
I stood up, handing Lizzy to Adam. “You’re out of your mind,” I told Vance. “She locked a six-year-old in a closet!”
Vance gave me a chilling, empty smile. “A troubled child acting out, Natalie. Your parents are merely trying to manage a difficult psychological case. In fact, child services will be at your home tomorrow to assess if you are fit to house her, considering your history of anxiety.”
My blood ran cold. My mother had told him about my postpartum depression from seven years ago. She was already spinning the narrative.
By dawn, the impossible happened. Gloria and Walt made bail. The judge, an old country club friend of my father, signed off on it before the sun even fully rose.
Adam drove us home in silence. Lizzy was asleep in the backseat next to our son, Noah, who had slept through the night at our house with a babysitter. When we pulled into our driveway, I felt a paralyzing sense of paranoia. Every shadow looked like my mother. Every passing car looked like my father's SUV.
Later that afternoon, Detective Ramirez called.
“Natalie, I need you to come down to the precinct. Alone.”
When I arrived, Ramirez led me into an evidence room. On the metal table sat a worn, leather-bound diary.
“We found this hidden inside your mother’s mattress,” Ramirez said. “We are trying to identify the child who owned the pink sneaker. I need you to look at these pages. Does the name 'Clara' mean anything to you?”
I stared at the name written in my mother’s elegant, looping cursive. Clara.
A memory, buried deep beneath decades of psychological conditioning, forced its way to the surface. I was eight years old. A little girl with blonde braids had come to live with us. My mother told me she was a foster child. But Clara was always sick. She was always confined to her room. And then, one day, she was just… gone.
“Clara was ungrateful, Natalie,” my mother had told me back then. “She ran away. Good riddance. This is why you must never leave me. The world is dangerous.”
“She was a foster child,” I whispered to Ramirez, my hands trembling. “About twenty years ago. But my mother said she ran away.”
Ramirez turned the page of the diary. The entry was dated October 14th, 2005.
Clara is becoming difficult. She refuses the medicine. She scratched my arm today. The storm shelter will teach her gratitude. Ian is asking too many questions. I may need to deal with him, too.
I gasped, covering my mouth. Ian had known about Clara. My brother, who had always been the black sheep, the one my parents sent away to "rehab" facilities whenever he rebelled.
“Natalie,” Ramirez said quietly. “Ian didn’t just abandon Lizzy. He found out what happened to Clara. He went to that house to confront your parents and take his daughter. And your mother made sure he didn't leave.”
Suddenly, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was an unknown number.
I answered it on speaker.
“Nat?” a ragged, breathless voice gasped through the static.
“Ian?!” I screamed.
May you like
“Nat, listen to me. Don’t trust the police. She owns the judge. She owns the chief. I’m bleeding… I’m at the old hunting cabin. You have to protect Lizzy. She’s coming for her.”
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