Chapter 2: The Story They Tried to Bury
By the time Officer Reynolds finished taking my statement, my phone had thirty-seven missed calls.
Amanda.
Mom.
Unknown numbers from relatives who had watched my daughter collapse and said nothing.
I didn’t answer.
Then one text came through from my mother.
Do not ruin this family over one mistake.
One mistake.
A grown woman throwing a hot skillet at a four-year-old child was “one mistake.”
My hands shook so hard I almost dropped the phone.
Then another message appeared.
Amanda is upset. You need to calm down before you make things worse.
Worse?
I looked through the small hospital window at Lily sleeping with a bandage near her cheek and an IV taped to her tiny hand.
That was when something inside me went completely still.
I called my husband, Daniel.
He had been on a business trip in Boston and answered on the second ring.
“Sarah?”
I couldn’t speak at first.
Then I told him everything.
There was silence on the other end.
Not confusion.
Not disbelief.
The kind of silence that comes before a storm.
“I’m on my way,” he said.
His voice was low.
“And Sarah?”
May you like
“Yeah?”
“Do not answer your mother. Do not answer Amanda. From now on, they talk to the police.”
