Chapter 8
Julia asked Claire not to respond to the anonymous message.
"Preserve it and give it to Brooks," she said. "We don't know who sent it, why, or whether the page is complete."
Claire wanted to believe the sender was someone inside the family trying to help. She also wanted to print the words across a billboard facing Ethan's office. Instead, she did what the lawyer said.
Detective Brooks examined the image and asked Claire whether she'd seen the actual notebook. Claire had not. She recognized Ethan's handwriting from the grocery lists he left on the refrigerator, but the source of the photograph remained unknown.
"Can you find the page?" Claire asked.
"We'll follow the leads available to us," Brooks said. "I don't want you trying to enter accounts or confront someone to prove a theory."
Meanwhile, the baby-monitor company answered the preservation request Claire had made as the account holder. The service confirmed that cloud events were retained for a limited period, and some clips had been deleted through an authorized account session. Technical details were provided to the investigator through the appropriate process.
Claire checked what she could lawfully see herself. When she asked herself why she had accepted that arrangement, Claire remembered the practical avalanche of new parenthood: insurance forms, feeding instructions, sleep-deprived evenings, a sink full of bottles. Ethan handled technology; she handled appointments. Dividing the work had been reasonable. What hadn't been reasonable was treating that division as permanent authority over information about their child. She wrote down every shared service she needed to review lawfully and made an appointment with an account-security specialist recommended by the victim advocate. She would not make the same dependency invisible a second time.
The account settings showed that Ethan had been the administrator. He had invited Claire as a viewer shortly after Wren came home from the hospital.
She had thought it was thoughtful. One less password to remember.
Now she realized she'd been depending on his permission to see the room where their daughter slept.
Tessa helped her set up a new monitor at the guest house, with Claire controlling the account and securely sharing only what was needed for care. It was a small task with unexpected weight.
When Wren's image appeared on the screen, Claire said, "I should have learned this sooner."
"You learned it today," Tessa answered.
Ethan left a voicemail that evening. "I'm not fighting you about Wren. I'm fighting what you're doing to our family."
Claire listened once, then stored it beside the others.
A police interview brought another contradiction. Margaret claimed she'd entered the bathroom only after hearing Wren cry. But the officer's scene photographs showed the black plunger near the bowl and the older woman's discarded rubber cleaning glove beside the sink. Margaret acknowledged buying the plunger but could not clearly explain why she'd brought it into the room while caring for an infant.
The evidence alone did not prove every step. It did make her account harder to square with Claire's observations.
Claire kept returning to the wet gray blanket. She had asked why Margaret would take it from the nursery on Tuesday, then again on Friday. Why that one, with its little embroidered moon?
She opened her photographs and found the answer to a smaller question. The blanket had been a gift from Claire's mother, sewn with a personalized label. Margaret had complained that Claire used it too often, saying Ethan's family had blankets of their own.
"She knew I'd recognize it," Claire told Julia.
"Or she wanted a recognizable item in photographs," Julia replied. "Both are possibilities, not conclusions."
The distinction irritated Claire. She wanted answers now, clean and sharp. Yet she was beginning to understand why investigators moved slowly. A frightening interpretation could feel like proof long before it became proof.
Late that night, Brooks called.
"We found the sender of the page image," she said. "It came from a former employee at Ethan's office who kept a copy of a scheduling attachment. She says Ethan sent the notebook page to the shared office printer by mistake. She is willing to give a statement."
Claire gripped the phone. "Did she say why she sent it anonymously?"
"She was worried about her job reference and didn't want to be dragged into a family dispute. She's agreed to speak formally now."
"And the notebook?"
"That's what we're asking about next."
Claire looked at Wren asleep beneath a soft yellow night-light. An ordinary office printer had preserved something Ethan apparently never intended her to see.
May you like
The question was no longer whether records existed.
It was what Ethan had been preparing to do with them.
