Chapter 5 - The Trap is Set
The hospital room was quiet except for the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor and Sophie’s soft, exhausted breathing as she drifted off to sleep under the influence of mild pain medication. Her left arm was heavily bandaged, glowing white against the hospital blanket.
My phone vibrated in my palm. It was a call from Diane.
I looked at Detective Vance. He nodded slowly, gesturing for me to put it on speakerphone and place it on the small rolling table beside the bed. Mark stood right behind me, his hand resting firmly on my shoulder, anchoring me.
I tapped the green accept button.
“Laura?” Diane’s voice chimed through the speaker, sounding entirely too bright, practiced, and hollow. “Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been calling for an hour. How is our little angel? The doctor at the desk wouldn’t give me any details because I’m ‘just the grandmother,’ can you believe the red tape?”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted copper just to keep my voice from cracking with pure hatred. “She’s in surgery prep for skin grafting evaluation, Mom. She’s in a lot of pain.”
A brief pause on the other end. For a second, I thought I might hear a shred of genuine remorse. I was a fool for even hoping.
“Oh... well, children bounce back fast, you know that,” Diane dismissed the trauma with a light, airy wave of her invisible hand. “Kids are resilient. But listen, Laura, we need to get our stories straight before you talk to the police or any social workers who might be sniffing around the hospital.”
Mark let out a low, dangerous growl, but I silenced him with a sharp glance.
“Stories straight about what, Mom?” I asked, keeping my voice chillingly flat.
“About what happened in the living room, of course!” Diane sighed impatiently, as if talking to a difficult child. “Vanessa is beside herself—she’s crying in her room because she feels so guilty about breaking that stupid glass frame. But Sophie was running too close to the edge, she startled me, and the pot slipped out of my oven mitts. It was a pure, unadulterated accident. If anyone asks, you’ll back us up, right? We’re family, Laura. We protect our own.”
Detective Vance raised his eyebrows, picking up a pen and writing something down in his notebook with a slow, deliberate stroke.
“Protect our own,” I echoed softly. “Is that what you call throwing boiling soup at a six-year-old child because she was standing near a broken picture frame?”
The line went dead silent. The artificial warmth instantly drained from Diane’s voice, replaced by a cold, sharp edge of panic.
“What... what did you say?” Diane stammered.
“I said,” I leaned closer to the phone, letting every ounce of my fury bleed into the microphone, “that the security camera above the bookshelf recorded every single second of it, Mom. Every lie, every shove, every drop of boiling water. The police already have the file.”
Click.
I hung up the phone. The room fell back into a heavy, suffocating silence, broken only by the hum of hospital machinery.
May you like
Detective Vance stood up, buttoning his trench coat. “Well, that saves us the trouble of an interrogation. Stay here with your daughter. Mr. Bennett, if you’d like to ride along in the second cruiser to watch justice get served, I’m sure we can arrange it.”
Mark looked down at me, a grim, vindictive smile touching his lips. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
