Chapter 6 - Someone Had Been Lying for Months
The photo looked real.
That was the problem.
Vanessa claimed it happened three weeks earlier.
She claimed Lily had done it with a rock.
I knew that was impossible.
Three weeks earlier, Lily had spent the entire weekend with my parents.
I pulled up the calendar.
Dates.
Photos.
A receipt from the children’s museum.
My mother had sent me a picture of Lily holding cotton candy on the exact afternoon Vanessa claimed my daughter had vandalized the car.
“She lied,” Claire said.
“She didn’t just lie.”
I enlarged Vanessa’s photo.
“She prepared this.”
Claire looked at me.
“What are you thinking?”
“I think this started before the birthday.”
My lawyer agreed.
Ben asked me to create a timeline of every strange incident involving Vanessa and Lily.
The broken picture frame.
The missing necklace.
The fake fever.
A ripped stuffed animal Vanessa said Lily had destroyed during a tantrum.
Crayon on the hallway wall.
A glass knocked off the kitchen counter.
Things I had treated as normal family chaos.
Now they looked different.
By evening, I was opening boxes in the garage.
I found the broken frame.
Vanessa had told me she threw it away.
She hadn’t.
The glass was cracked.
The wooden backing was bent.
And written across the back in black marker were three words.
LET HER GO.
I stared at them.
Claire whispered, “Did Lily write that?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Lily writes her G backward.”
Every G.
Every time.
This G was perfect.
Adult handwriting.
I took photos and sent them to Ben.
Then I heard Lily scream upstairs.
I ran.
She was standing in her bedroom doorway.
“What happened?”
She pointed at the window.
“There was somebody there.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Outside?”
She nodded.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire ran downstairs and checked the backyard.
Nobody.
The side gate was open.
I knew I had locked it.
I called the police.
They searched the property and found no one.
But beneath Lily’s bedroom window, there was a fresh footprint in the flower bed.
The next morning, I installed cameras.
Front door.
Backyard.
Driveway.
Side gate.
I changed every lock in the house.
At noon, Diane—Vanessa’s mother—called.
I almost ignored her.
Then I answered.
“What?”
Her voice sounded nervous.
“Mark, I need to talk to you.”
“About Vanessa?”
“Yes.”
“Then talk.”
“Not on the phone.”
I laughed once.
“You think I’m meeting you alone?”
“No. Bring Claire. Bring your lawyer if you want.”
“What is this about?”
Long silence.
Then Diane whispered, “There are things you don’t know about my daughter.”
My anger faded into something colder.
“What things?”
“She’s done something like this before.”
I gripped the phone.
“To a child?”
May you like
Diane started crying.
And before she answered, the call suddenly disconnected.
