Chapter 4 - The Photograph
The diner on 4th Street was almost empty when I hurried inside, carrying Lily on my hip. The neon lights buzzed overhead, casting a harsh glare over the red vinyl booths.
Elena was sitting in the very back, a cup of untouched coffee in front of her. She was out of her uniform, wearing a plain grey sweater, looking ten years older than she had this morning.
I slid into the booth across from her and settled Lily next to me with a menu to color on.
“Thank you,” I whispered, sliding the Tupperware container onto the table. “Elena, what is happening? Why is my husband drugging me?”
Elena looked at the container as if it were a snake.
“He is not the man you think he is, Mrs. Sarah,” she said, her accent thickening with fear. “I have worked for Mr. Mark for five years. Long before he moved to Dallas. Long before he met you.”
I stared at her. “He told me he hired you six months ago when we bought the house.”
Elena shook her head slowly. “No. I worked for him in Chicago. When he was married to Rachel.”
The bottom fell out of my stomach. “Rachel?”
“His first wife,” Elena said. She reached into her purse and pulled out an old, creased photograph. She slid it across the sticky diner table.
I picked it up.
It was Mark, looking perhaps five years younger. He was smiling warmly, his arm wrapped around a beautiful blonde woman. And sitting in the woman’s lap was a little girl.
A little girl wearing a silver medical alert bracelet.
“Chloe,” I whispered.
Elena nodded. “Rachel was very wealthy. She had a trust fund, just like you. But Rachel wanted to leave him. She found out he was stealing from her accounts to pay off gambling debts.”
“What happened to them?” I asked, my voice trembling.
“Mark began slipping things into Rachel’s food,” Elena said, looking down at her hands. “Small things at first. Medicine to make her tired. To make her forgetful. He convinced her family she was having a nervous breakdown. He was planning to have her declared legally incompetent so he could take control of her estate.”
“Did it work?”
Elena’s eyes filled with tears. “He got careless. One night, he put the medicine in a glass of milk. But Rachel didn’t drink it. Chloe did.”
I looked at the little girl in the photograph. “Oh my god.”
“She was highly allergic,” Elena whispered. “Her throat closed. She died before the ambulance arrived. Rachel realized what he had done. But Mark had all the medicine prescribed under Rachel’s name. The police thought Rachel had accidentally poisoned her own daughter during a manic episode.”
I felt physically sick. The receipt in my pocket. The equine tranquilizer bought with my credit card.
He was doing it again. He was setting me up to look like an unstable mother so he could take my trust fund and gain custody of Lily.
“Rachel went to a psychiatric hospital,” Elena finished quietly. “Mark inherited half the estate. He paid me a lot of money to keep quiet and move with him to Dallas. I was so scared. But today… when I saw him grab Lily… I couldn’t watch it happen again.”
Suddenly, my phone rang.
It was the security company that monitored our house alarm.
May you like
I answered it. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Sarah?” the operator asked. “We just received an emergency panic signal from your residence. Your husband triggered it. He informed the police that you are experiencing a severe psychological break, and that you kidnapped your daughter at knifepoint.”
