Chapter 19 - Missing Page
The play therapist’s report arrived with page numbers that skipped.
Maya noticed first. “One, two, three, five.”
I stared. “What was on four?”
We called the clinic. The records administrator swore the file had been transmitted in full. Then she checked the audit log and went silent.
“What?” Maya asked.
“There was a prior subpoena request from Mr. Bennett’s counsel,” the administrator said. “And an internal request to duplicate a scanned page under a different patient index.”
My pulse started pounding.
Within two hours, we were in the clinic conference room with the administrator, her supervisor, and a red-faced clerk who admitted Ryan’s lawyer’s assistant had pushed for speed and “helped clarify” which pages belonged where.
Page four was the page with Noah’s drawing of himself on the floor beside two bowls, labeled in shaky capital letters the therapist had copied below:
BAD KID PLACE
The therapist’s progress note on the same page documented Noah saying, “Grandma makes me eat low so the judge knows.”
I closed my eyes as the magnitude of the omission settled over me. Not random mishandling. Directed damage control.
The clinic supervisor immediately issued a corrected certified record and an affidavit explaining the irregularity. Maya, normally measured, allowed herself one sharp smile.
“Tampering,” she said. “Not with the content, but with access and handling. That’s enough to raise hell.”
The problem was time.
Filing a separate sanctions motion could delay the evidentiary hearing by weeks. Weeks with Noah still rotating through Ryan’s orbit. Sarah advised caution; she wanted the corrected page before the judge, not another sprawling side battle.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We choose the faster road,” Maya said. “Use the tampering to destroy their credibility at hearing instead of pausing the hearing to punish it first.”
I looked at Noah’s drawing again. Four circles, three lines, one tiny body on the floor. Children tell truth in proportions.
That night at the supervised exchange, Noah hugged me so fiercely he nearly knocked my purse from my shoulder. “I hid Dad’s other phone,” he whispered into my neck.
I froze.
“Where?”
“In the hallway vent. Because Grandma said don’t let her see.”
“Which hallway?”
“At Daddy’s condo. The one by the laundry closet.”
My heart slammed once.
A second phone. Not the polished one Ryan flashed in court. A hidden one.
“Does it have videos?”
Noah shrugged. “Talking.”
Voice memos. Calls. Something.
I told Maya immediately. She moved fast, but Ryan moved faster. By the time the monitor and a building manager legally accessed the condo hallway, the vent cover was off and the space empty.
I wanted to scream.
Instead I crouched in the parking lot and breathed until I could stand.
Ben called while I was still there. “Don’t panic yet.”
“Bit late.”
“If Ryan recorded voice memos on an Apple-linked device, there may be synced traces elsewhere. Let me work.”
May you like
I looked up at the condo windows where my son slept on certain nights and wondered how many places a man could hide his own conscience before running out of walls.
📖 The missing therapy page exposed one more layer of manipulation, but Noah’s whisper about Ryan’s second phone opened a race we could still lose by hours. 👇
