Chapter 4 - The Missing Files
My office sat at the back of the house, small and neat, with trial binders stacked on one shelf and Eli’s stick-figure drawings taped near the printer. Dana did not touch anything without asking. She only looked. But as soon as I sat at the desk and woke the computer, I knew something was wrong.
A folder on my desktop had been opened recently.
Not one of my case files—those were protected—but my personal family folder. The one where I stored scanned pediatric records, school forms, benefits documents, and the emergency guardianship paperwork.
Dana saw my face shift.
“What is it?”
I clicked into the access history. Three weeks earlier, the folder had been opened from a removable drive. Several files were copied. A printer log showed pages printed that I had never printed.
Monica went pale.
“That proves nothing.”
“It proves someone used my home computer to copy private files,” I said.
Dana’s voice stayed level. “Do you have home security cameras?”
“Yes.”
We checked the living-room camera first. Then the hallway. Then the office door.
Three Sundays earlier, while I was outside helping Eli learn to ride without training wheels, Monica had walked into my office carrying a tote bag. She closed the door most of the way, but not completely. The camera caught enough. She plugged something into my computer, printed several pages, and took photographs with her phone. A few minutes later, she walked back into the living room smiling and asked Eli whether he wanted more lemonade.
Dana watched the clip twice.
Monica folded her arms like she could still outstare evidence.
“I was looking for a printer because mine was broken.”
“In my office?” I asked.
“You leave things lying around, Rachel.”
Dana turned to her. “Did you have permission to access her personal files?”
Monica said nothing.
“Did you print private documents related to her child?”
Still nothing.
Dana wrote for a full fifteen seconds. The sound of her pen scratching paper was louder than any argument could have been.
Then she asked for the original photo files that accompanied Monica’s report.
Monica hesitated long enough to answer the question before she spoke.
“My phone is in my car.”
“I’ll need the original files, including metadata,” Dana said. “If those images were altered, cropped, or misrepresented, that matters.”
Monica laughed once, but there was no confidence left in it. “So now I’m under investigation?”
Dana looked up.
“You made allegations about a child. We follow the evidence wherever it goes.”
For the first time that afternoon, Monica looked scared.
May you like
And I understood this was much bigger than a jealous sister trying to embarrass me.
She had been building something.
