CHAPTER 5
Rachel called me before Ryan did.
I almost didn’t answer because I didn’t recognize the number.
Then Kate looked at the Facebook comment again.
“Take it.”
I did.
“Hello?”
“Sarah?”
The woman’s voice trembled.
“This is Rachel.”
I sat down.
“Ryan’s cousin?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For staying quiet.”
I looked at Noah sleeping in my arms.
Rachel started crying.
“When Ava was six months old, Linda offered to babysit because I was exhausted.”
My throat tightened.
“I saw the picture.”
“Then you know about the marks.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t know all of it.”
I closed my eyes.
“Tell me.”
Rachel took a shaky breath.
“When I came home, Ava was in the bathtub.”
I remembered what Ryan had said.
Cold water.
“She was screaming,” Rachel continued. “Linda was holding her upright under the faucet.”
My stomach turned.
“She said Ava had been throwing a tantrum.”
“At six months old?”
“I know.”
Rachel’s voice cracked.
“I screamed at her. I grabbed Ava. Linda told me I was weak and that babies learn manipulation earlier than people think.”
I felt sick.
“What happened afterward?”
“I called Ryan.”
That surprised me.
“Ryan?”
“He was the only person in the family I trusted.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What did he do?”
“He came over.”
Rachel hesitated.
“He believed me.”
I stared at the wall.
“Did he know about Grace then?”
“Yes.”
The word cut through me.
“So he knew this was a pattern.”
“Yes.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
Rachel hurried.
“He was terrified, Sarah. I’m not excusing him. But he was.”
“What happened after you called him?”
“He confronted Linda.”
“And?”
“She cried. She said she had panicked. She said she would go back to therapy.”
“Back?”
“Yes.”
I stood slowly.
“Rachel, what do you mean back?”
Silence.
Then she whispered, “You really don’t know anything, do you?”
My chest tightened.
“No.”
“Linda has been in treatment on and off since Ryan was a child.”
“For what?”
“She has rage episodes.”
The simple phrase terrified me more than a diagnosis would have.
Rachel continued.
“She gets overwhelmed by crying. Especially babies crying.”
I looked at Noah.
“She loses control.”
“Yes.”
“Did Ryan know?”
“Yes.”
I shut my eyes.
Rachel started crying again.
“I begged him never to leave a baby with her. He promised me.”
I felt hollow.
After the call, I sat silently for a long time.
Kate didn’t ask what I was thinking.
She knew.
When Ryan arrived an hour later, I met him on the porch.
He looked terrible.
Unshaven.
Red-eyed.
Still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
“Is Noah okay?”
“Yes.”
“Can I see him?”
I crossed my arms.
“Did Rachel call you?”
His face changed.
“Yes.”
“She told me everything.”
He nodded slowly.
“You promised her Linda would never be alone with another baby.”
“I did.”
“And then you brought her into our home.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He looked toward the ground.
“I thought I could control it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“I thought if you were there—”
“I slept.”
“I know.”
“You told me she was there to help so I could rest.”
“I know.”
“Then explain it.”
His face crumpled.
“I wanted my mother to be normal.”
The anger in me paused.
Ryan sat on the porch step.
“I wanted Noah to have a grandmother.”
I stayed standing.
“I wanted to believe the last five years meant something.”
“What happened during those five years?”
“She went to therapy. She stopped drinking completely. She apologized to Rachel.”
“Did Rachel forgive her?”
“No.”
“Did Ava ever see her again?”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“So the one mother who knew what Linda did refused to let her near her child.”
“Yes.”
“And you decided that was too cautious?”
“No.”
His voice broke.
“I decided I was different.”
I sat across from him.
“What does that mean?”
“I thought because I knew what she could do, I could prevent it.”
“That makes no sense.”
“I know that now.”
“No, Ryan. You knew then.”
He looked at me.
I hated how broken he looked.
I hated that I still loved him.
“My whole childhood was built around managing her,” he whispered. “If Mom got upset, Dad told me to be quiet. If Grace cried, I tried to distract Mom. If Mom started yelling, I apologized even when I didn’t know what I’d done.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“You grow up like that and you start thinking keeping someone calm is the same as keeping everyone safe.”
I stared at him.
That was the first thing he had said that made sense.
Not enough.
But something.
“My father left when I was eleven,” he continued. “Mom told me he abandoned us. I hated him for years.”
“Why didn’t he take you?”
“He tried.”
“What?”
Ryan looked at me.
“He filed for custody.”
I felt another piece of the story shift.
“Mom said he didn’t.”
“She lied.”
“How do you know?”
“Dad sent me the court records last night.”
I swallowed.
“What happened?”
“Mom accused him of hitting her.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she admitted to me years later that she exaggerated.”
My stomach tightened.
“Exaggerated?”
“She said she had to do what was necessary to keep her children.”
I thought about her Facebook post.
Her police complaint.
Her threat.
The pattern was suddenly obvious.
When Linda felt threatened, she didn’t defend herself.
She destroyed the credibility of whoever stood against her.
Ryan looked toward the house.
“Can I hold Noah?”
I didn’t answer immediately.
Then I nodded.
Kate brought him out.
Ryan’s face broke the second Noah was placed in his arms.
“Hey, buddy.”
Noah blinked up at him.
Ryan kissed the top of his head.
“I’m sorry.”
His voice was barely a whisper.
“I’m so sorry.”
I turned away because I was crying too.
My phone buzzed.
It was Officer Bennett.
“We reviewed the hospital report,” he said after I answered. “We’d like you to come in and make a formal statement.”
“I will.”
“There’s another matter.”
My stomach tightened.
“What?”
“Mrs. Miller provided photographs of her injury and is requesting charges.”
Ryan heard enough to understand.
He looked furious.
The officer continued.
“However, because there are allegations of child endangerment and self-defense, we’re investigating the entire incident.”
“I understand.”
“Do you have any video from inside the home?”
I almost said no.
Then I remembered something.
The baby monitor.
Not the handheld screen.
The camera connected to an app.
Ryan had installed cloud storage when Noah was born.
I looked at him.
“Ryan.”
His eyes widened.
“The nursery camera.”
“No,” he said quickly. “It only covers the crib.”
“The bassinet was in the living room yesterday.”
He stared at me.
I stood so fast the chair scraped backward.
“Where was the camera?”
Ryan went pale.
We had moved it downstairs three days earlier because Noah had been napping in the living room.
It sat on the bookshelf.
Pointing toward the bassinet.
My hands shook so badly I dropped my phone once while opening the app.
The recordings were stored for seven days.
I found yesterday’s date.
2:41 p.m.
I pressed play.
There was Linda.
There was Noah.
There was the bottle.
May you like
And when I watched what she did before I came running into the room, I stopped breathing.
Pouring milk over his head had not been the first thing she did.
