Chapter 2 - Uncle Colin
Violet had a mild concussion, bruising and a sprained wrist.
No catastrophic injury.
I was grateful.
Then immediately angry at myself for feeling grateful, because “not worse” does not mean acceptable.
At the hospital, a detective asked Violet what happened.
I was asked to wait outside for part of the interview.
I hated it.
I agreed.
She was sixteen.
This was her account.
Not mine to improve.
What emerged was painfully ordinary.
Colin had not broken into the house with some elaborate plan.
Violet had given him the alarm code three days earlier.
He told her he wanted to drop off boxes belonging to her mother while I was at work.
He said:
“Your dad will make it into a confrontation if I ask him.”
Violet believed him.
Because I probably would have.
Colin entered before she returned from school.
When Violet found him upstairs, he was not carrying boxes.
He was searching Mara’s old office.
She demanded to know why.
He told her he needed “one thing that belonged to the Reed family.”
Violet realized he had lied.
She tried to call me.
Colin grabbed for her backpack.
She pulled away.
Lost her balance near the staircase.
Hit the wall and floor.
No graphic beating.
No prolonged attack.
One violent decision during a struggle.
Then a worse series of decisions afterward.
He took her regular phone.
Saw she was conscious.
Told her:
“Stay down. I’ll be gone in five minutes.”
Then returned upstairs and kept searching.
He left the black phone in her backpack because it was the one he had given her weeks earlier.
The burner.
Their secret line.
He probably assumed she was too dazed to use it.
He was wrong.
She never called him.
He called us.
Why?
The detective believed he saw my car from an upstairs window and panicked.
He used his second phone to call the burner.
“You came home early.”
Control through intimidation.
Not a brilliant plan.
A frightened man trying to buy minutes after something had already gone wrong.
The question remained:
Why did my sixteen-year-old daughter have a secret phone from an uncle I had forbidden her to contact?
That answer was partly Colin.
May you like
Partly Violet.
And, whether I liked it or not, partly me.
