Chapter 4
The week before the trial, I went back to our old house one last time.
I had to pack up Leo’s things.
The toys he couldn’t live without.
His favorite dinosaur blanket.
The clothes he’d outgrown.
Jake came with me.
Said I shouldn’t be alone there.
He was right.
The house felt cold the second we walked in.
Like all the warmth had been sucked out of it the night I found Leo on the floor.
The shards of Ethan’s water glass were still swept into a pile by the front door, marked with police evidence tape.
The entry table still had the faint ring of my purse where I’d dropped it.
I walked up the stairs slow, my hand tight on the railing.
The nursery door was closed.
I hesitated before I turned the handle.
Jake put a hand on my shoulder.
“We don’t have to do this today,” he said.
“I can come back with a friend. Pack it all up for you.”
I shook my head.
“I have to,” I said.
“For Leo. I need to take his things and never come back here again.”
I pushed the door open.
The blue nightlight was still plugged in, casting that same icy glow over the carpet.
The spot where Leo had lain was empty now, but I could still see him there.
Blue.
Still.
My throat tightened.
Jake stepped in front of me, blocking my view.
He started packing Leo’s toys into a box, his movements quick and gentle, like he was trying to get me out of there as fast as possible.
I turned to the closet, pulling out Leo’s tiny hoodies and jeans, folding them blind, my eyes fixed on the wall so I wouldn’t look at the floor.
That’s when I saw it.
Tucked in the back of the top shelf of Ethan’s closet, in a locked metal box I’d never seen before.
The lock was broken, probably by the police when they’d searched the house.
I lifted the lid.
Inside were stacks of paper.
Gambling IOUs.
Threatening letters from loan sharks.
A printed copy of Leo’s life insurance policy, with Ethan’s name scrawled in the beneficiary blank.
And a journal.
Leather-bound.
Ethan’s handwriting all over it.
I flipped it open, my hands shaking.
The entries went back two years.
He wrote about how much he hated my job.
How much he hated that I made more money than him.
How I thought I was better than him.
How Leo was “just another thing she holds over my head.”
Then, three months before the attack, the entries changed.
He wrote about the gambling debts getting worse.
About the loan sharks threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay.
About the insurance policy.
About how “it worked once before. No one suspected a thing. It’ll work again.”
The last entry was dated the night of my company party.
Tonight’s the night, it read.
She’ll be gone till late. The sedative will make the attack look real. By morning, the problem’s solved. The debt’s paid. I’m free.
I dropped the journal like it was on fire.
Jake turned, saw my face, and rushed over.
He read the entry over my shoulder, his jaw tightening so hard I thought his teeth would crack.
“This is it,” he said, picking the journal up careful, like it was evidence.
“This is the smoking gun. He admitted to both of them. In his own handwriting.”
We took the journal straight to Detective Miller.
He called the prosecutor immediately.
Said this changed everything.
There was no way Ethan’s lawyer could talk her way out of a handwritten confession.
I sat in Miller’s office, staring at the wall, while they made copies of every page.
I’d thought I knew the worst of what Ethan had done.
I’d thought the money was the worst part.
But it wasn’t.
He’d hated us for years.
He’d planned Leo’s murder for months.
He’d written it down.
Like it was a grocery list.
Like our lives meant nothing.
The first day of trial arrived two weeks later.
The courtroom was packed.
Reporters lined the back row, cameras clicking as we walked in.
Ethan was led in by two bailiffs, his hands cuffed in front of him.
He’d lost weight in jail.
His face was gaunt, his hair greasy.
He looked right at me as he sat down.
And he smirked.
A cold, cruel twist of his lips that made my blood run cold.
He still thought he was going to win.
He still thought he’d get away with it.
The prosecutor gave her opening statement first.
She laid out the evidence for the jury.
The saline canisters.
The sedative.
Ethan’s gambling debts.
The insurance policy.
The journal.
And Jake.
She told them about Lila.
About how Ethan had gotten away with her death for 15 years.
About how he’d tried to do the exact same thing to my son.
“This is not a story about an asthma attack gone wrong,” she said, looking each juror in the eye.
“This is a story about greed. About cruelty. About a man who killed one child and tried to kill another for money. And today, finally, he answers for both.”
Ethan’s lawyer stood next.
She spun her story.
Said I was a manipulative wife who’d forged the journal.
Said Jake had a grudge against Ethan from high school and had planted the saline canisters to frame him.
Said Leo’s testimony was coached, that a five-year-old couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth.
“These people are lying to you,” she said, pointing at me and Jake.
“They’re using a dead girl and a sick little boy to put an innocent man in prison for the rest of his life.”
I looked at the jury as she spoke.
Some of them nodded.
Some of them looked at me with doubt in their eyes.
My stomach twisted.
Jake reached over under the table and squeezed my hand.
Hard.
A silent reminder.
We had the truth.
May you like
The truth was enough.
It had to be.
