Chapter 3 - Mason Behind the Door
Paramedics arrived first.
They were calm, gentle, and fast.
One knelt beside Lily while another checked Mason and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. A police officer came in moments later, serious and quiet, his eyes moving from the medicine bottle to the note to the closet door.
I handed him the paper.
“My son left them here and called it discipline.”
The officer read it without changing expression.
But his jaw tightened.
Mason watched him nervously.
Then he held out the dead tablet.
“I recorded it,” he whispered.
The officer lowered himself to Mason’s level.
“You recorded what?”
Mason looked at me first.
I nodded.
He said, “Them talking before they left.”
The tablet battery was dead, but the paramedic found a charger in the kitchen. We waited while it powered on, every second feeling heavier than the last.
When the file opened, the screen stayed blurred from where I stood, but the voices were clear.
Marissa first.
“She’s not ruining Disney again.”
Then Brian.
“Dad will overreact if he finds out.”
Marissa said, “Then don’t let him find out.”
Mason’s small voice came through next.
“But Lily’s burning up.”
A chair scraped.
Brian’s voice lowered.
“Give me the tablet.”
Then a closet door closed.
I looked at my son’s house around me.
The framed photos.
The neat kitchen.
The birthday suitcase half-zipped near the wall.
Everything ordinary.
Everything monstrous.
The officer stopped the recording and looked at me.
“Sir, are you able to come with the children to the hospital?”
May you like
I held Lily’s hand.
“I’m not leaving them.”
