Chapter 4 - VOICES FROM THE DARK
The second day at the hospital brought a flicker of light,
as Frederick's fever finally broke and he began to take small sips of Pedialyte.
His eyes were no longer glassy,
and he actually reached out for a plush bear the nurses had given him,
a sight that brought Amy to tears of joy.
But as the physical wounds began to heal,
the emotional ones started to bleed.
Amy began to talk,
slowly at first,
sharing the horrors of the last few months.
"She would lock me in the laundry room when she had her friends over,"
Amy said,
staring at the hospital wall.
"She told them I was a drug addict and that she was the one raising Frederick."
"She would eat steaks and lobster in front of me,"
"while she gave me the scraps from the plates to eat in the kitchen."
I felt a cold shiver run down my spine,
my fists clenching so hard my nails drew blood.
My mother hadn't just been stealing our money,
she had been systematically dehumanizing the woman I loved.
"Why didn't anyone help you?"
I asked,
thinking of the relatives who were at the party.
"They all believed her,"
Amy replied,
"or they were too busy enjoying the free food to care."
"Aunt Betsy told me I was lucky to have such a generous mother-in-law."
"She said I was a burden on you,
and that I should be grateful for the roof over my head."
I realized then that the rot wasn't just in my mother,
it was in the entire extended family.
They were all complicit,
all fed by the same hand that was strangling my wife.
I took out my laptop and logged into the home security system I had installed a year ago.
Teresa had thought I had disconnected it to save money,
as she had asked me to do.
But as an engineer,
I knew better than to leave my family unprotected.
I had simply hidden the status lights and moved the recording to a cloud server she couldn't access.
I began to scroll through the footage,
and the horror I saw surpassed anything Amy had described.
I saw my mother slapping Amy for not cleaning the floor fast enough.
I saw Mason laughing as he practiced my signature on the legal documents.
I saw them talking about how they would "dispose" of the furniture once the house was sold.
But the worst was the footage from the night before I came home.
Frederick was crying in his crib,
clearly sick and in pain,
and my mother walked in,
screamed at him to be quiet,
and then shut the door and locked it from the outside.
She left him there,
suffering,
while she went back to the living room to watch a movie and drink wine.
I had to stop the video,
my breath coming in short,
sharp gasps as the room began to spin.
"I have it all,
Amy,"
I whispered,
showing her the screen.
"Every single thing she did is on video."
Amy looked at the footage and then at me,
a look of profound relief crossing her face.
"Now they can't say I'm lying,"
she whispered.
"No,
Amy,"
I said,
my voice hardening with a cold,
deadly purpose.
May you like
"Now they're going to prison for a very,
very long time."
