Chapter 5 - What Sophia Remembered About the Stairs
I didn't interrogate Sophia.
That became important.
Instead, I arranged for her to speak with an appropriate child specialist while I provided the background separately.
What emerged wasn't a polished story.
It was fragments.
Mommy yelling.
Grandma saying, “Give it back.”
A glass breaking.
Something red on the floor.
Rachel standing near the stairs.
Victoria grabbing Rachel's arm.
Then Sophia hiding.
Afterward, Victoria wiping the floor.
Sophia remembered her mother's bracelet coming loose.
She picked it up.
Victoria saw her holding it and took it away.
Later, Sophia saw Victoria push something behind the hallway vent cover.
That was why the bracelet mattered.
It wasn't proof of murder.
But if it was where Sophia said, it would strongly support her claim that she'd been awake and present after Rachel's fall.
That alone would destroy part of Victoria's account.
Meanwhile, my attorney helped me document Sophia's current condition and the financial support I'd been sending.
Bank statements showed $2,400 transfers every month.
Yet Sophia had been going hungry.
Where had the money gone?
I reviewed Victoria's messages.
One phrase kept appearing whenever I asked whether Sophia needed anything.
We're fine.
We're always fine.
Then I noticed something I'd ignored.
Three months after Rachel died, Victoria asked me to increase the monthly amount by $600.
She said Sophia had started private grief counseling.
I had never received an invoice.
I called the counselor whose name Victoria had given me.
The receptionist checked twice.
Sophia Carter had never been a patient.
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The missing food money and Rachel's death suddenly touched the same question.
What had my mother been paying for?
