Chapter 3 - WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I LEFT
The police took the memory card.
I wanted to see everything on it immediately.
Officer Ramirez refused.
“Not tonight.”
“That’s my son.”
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“I have two kids, Mr. Carter. I understand more than you think.”
That shut me up.
She lowered her voice.
“Right now, your son needs a father more than you need answers.”
I looked across the room.
Noah sat on the couch wrapped in a blanket, staring at the floor.
She was right.
But knowing that didn’t make waiting easier.
Vanessa’s phone went straight to voicemail.
Her car was gone.
Officers checked her sister’s house.
Nothing.
Her workplace.
Nothing.
At 11:40 p.m., I sat beside Noah in his bedroom.
He refused to sleep alone.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me?”
I turned toward him.
“For what?”
“For being bad.”
I sat straight up.
“Noah, listen to me.”
He stared at his blanket.
I put my hand under his chin and gently lifted his face.
“You did nothing to deserve what happened.”
“But Vanessa said—”
“I don’t care what Vanessa said.”
His lip trembled.
“She said I was ruining our family.”
“No.”
“She said you were tired because of me.”
“No.”
“She said you only married her because I needed a new mom.”
I swallowed the anger rising in my throat.
“I married Vanessa because I thought she was a good person.”
“Was she?”
I couldn’t lie.
“No.”
He stared at me.
“Did you know?”
That question hurt more than anything else.
“No.”
He watched my face, searching for hesitation.
I didn’t look away.
“If I had known, I would’ve stopped it the first time.”
Noah whispered, “I wanted to tell you.”
“What stopped you?”
“She showed me messages.”
“What messages?”
“From you.”
My body went cold.
“What did they say?”
He squeezed the blanket.
“One said you wished you could start over without me.”
I stood too fast.
“That message never existed.”
“She showed me your name.”
I grabbed my phone.
I searched my texts with Vanessa.
Nothing like that.
Of course there wasn’t.
But a seven-year-old wouldn’t understand how easy it was to fake a screenshot.
“She made it up,” I said.
Noah didn’t answer.
Then he said something worse.
“She has another phone.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“A little red one.”
“Where?”
“She keeps it in the garage.”
I called Ramirez.
Twenty-five minutes later, police returned.
They searched the garage.
Behind a locked cabinet, they found a red prepaid phone.
Dozens of messages.
Hundreds of photos.
And one contact saved only as the letter M.
The newest message had been sent six minutes before I got home.
Vanessa had written:
HE’S STARTING TO TALK. WE NEED TO MOVE THE DATE UP.
The reply came seconds later.
May you like
Tomorrow.
Before Daniel finds out.
