Chapter 2 - THE RIDE TO THE HOSPITAL
I climbed into the ambulance beside Sophie.
A paramedic cut away the blood-soaked ribbon around her neck.
Another placed a monitor against her chest.
Sophie stared at me with frightened brown eyes.
“Am I going to die?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
I took her hand.
“You are going to be okay.”
“Did Uncle Preston hate me?”
My throat closed.
“No child should ever have to ask that question.”
The paramedic looked at me but said nothing.
He cleaned the wound and explained that Sophie might need stitches and brain imaging.
I heard every word.
I understood none of them.
My phone vibrated repeatedly inside my purse.
My mother.
My father.
Preston.
Cassandra.
I turned it off.
At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Sophie was taken for a CT scan.
A nurse asked me to remain in the hallway.
I stood alone beneath the white lights, still wearing the blue dress I had chosen for my brother’s wedding.
Blood had dried across the front.
Detective Miles arrived twenty minutes later.
He carried a sealed evidence folder.
“The hotel gave us immediate access to the ballroom footage.”
“What did it show?”
He sat beside me.
“Your brother removed his phone from the head table.”
“He carried it toward the family seating area.”
“He waited until you were helping Sophie with her shoe.”
“Then he placed the phone inside her jacket.”
I closed my eyes.
Some small part of me had still hoped I was wrong.
“Why?”
“We are investigating that.”
“What happened before the accusation?”
“Did Sophie see or hear something?”
I remembered her disappearing for less than five minutes before dinner.
She had gone to the restroom with another flower girl.
When she returned, she seemed nervous.
I assumed the crowd overwhelmed her.
“Sophie told me she saw Uncle Preston kissing someone in a hallway.”
The words came from behind us.
Helena stood near the elevator.
Her hair had fallen loose from its pins.
She still wore her bridesmaid gown.
I stared at her.
“She told you?”
“Before the reception.”
“She said Preston was kissing a woman who was not Cassandra.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“She begged me not to.”
“She said Uncle Preston warned her that bad things happened to children who told wedding secrets.”
My stomach turned.
Detective Miles opened his notebook.
“Did Sophie identify the woman?”
Helena nodded.
“Your mother.”
For a moment, I thought I had misunderstood.
“My mother?”
“She did not say Preston was kissing her.”
“She said your mother was standing there watching.”
“The woman was someone else.”
“Who?”
Helena’s face tightened.
“Cassandra’s sister, Paige.”
The pieces shifted.
Sophie had seen the groom kissing his bride’s sister.
My mother had witnessed it.
Preston knew Sophie could expose him.
The theft accusation had not been about a phone.
It had been a way to discredit a child before she could speak.
The doctor entered before I could ask more.
May you like
“Sophie has a skull fracture.”
The hallway disappeared around me.
