Chapter 2 - The Night Rachel Died
I didn’t question Vanessa again.
Not yet.
I took the children upstairs, locked the bedroom door, and called my sister Emily.
“Come get Noah and Maisie.”
She heard something in my voice.
“What happened?”
“Just come.”
Twenty minutes later, my children were gone.
Safe.
Only then did I return downstairs.
Vanessa stood beside the sofa.
“You’re overreacting.”
I placed the tissue-wrapped glass on the coffee table.
“Tell me what this is.”
“A piece of junk.”
“Then why did you panic?”
“I didn’t.”
“You tried to take it from a sixteen-month-old.”
She folded her arms.
“Because it’s glass.”
Reasonable.
Too reasonable.
I looked toward the staircase.
Rachel had died there on May 17.
I had been in Chicago on business.
Vanessa had been one of Rachel’s closest friends.
She was also the person who called me.
Her exact words still lived inside my head.
Daniel, there’s been an accident.
Rachel fell.
By the time I reached the hospital, Rachel was gone.
Vanessa told police she had arrived after hearing Maisie crying through the baby monitor Rachel had shared with her during a girls’ weekend setup.
I never questioned it.
Why would I?
Vanessa helped with the funeral.
She helped with the children.
Months later, grief blurred into dependence.
Dependence became a relationship.
I married her six months after Rachel died.
Too fast.
Everyone told me so.
I thought they didn’t understand grief.
Now I wondered whether I hadn’t understood Vanessa.
I opened the police report on my laptop.
There it was.
“Broken decorative glass located near upper stair landing.”
But the evidence inventory showed no glass collected.
No photograph attached.
No item number.
I read it again.
Something had been seen.
Something had vanished.
Then I found the name of the officer who wrote the note.
Detective Aaron Mills.
Retired now.
I called the number listed online.
He answered on the fourth ring.
When I told him Rachel’s name, he went silent.
Then:
“I always wondered whether someone would call me about that case.”
My skin prickled.
“Why?”
May you like
His answer made my grip tighten around the phone.
“Because I never believed we found the whole scene.”
