Chapter 3 - The Woman Everyone Loved
Madison left the house that afternoon.
Her lawyer immediately contacted mine.
She claimed Olivia had fabricated everything because she was jealous.
She claimed I had turned my daughter against her.
She claimed I was emotionally unstable after losing Sarah.
And then she did something I hadn't expected.
She called my mother.
She cried.
She told Mom I had abandoned her.
Mom listened.
Then she hung up.
When I arrived at my parents' house that evening, Mom was waiting.
“She lied to me,” Mom said.
“How do you know?”
Mom opened her phone.
“Because she sent me this.”
It was a message.
Ethan is punishing me because I’m pregnant.
Mom looked at me.
“She never told me she was pregnant.”
“Neither did I.”
Claire entered the room.
“I've been looking through the family photos.”
She showed me several.
Madison standing beside Olivia.
Madison smiling.
Olivia looking uncomfortable.
I had never noticed.
Claire had.
“She never looks at Madison,” Claire said.
I stared at the photographs.
She was right.
In every picture, Olivia leaned toward me.
Away from Madison.
“How did we miss this?” I whispered.
Claire looked at me.
“Because Madison was good.”
She wasn't wrong.
Madison had volunteered at children's charities.
She had been charming with neighbors.
She had brought cookies to my mother's house.
She had posted photographs of herself and Olivia online.
Everyone thought she was wonderful.
But then Claire found something.
A video.
It had been recorded accidentally by my mother's phone during Thanksgiving.
The camera was pointed toward the kitchen.
Madison's voice could be heard.
“Stop crying.”
Olivia's tiny voice answered.
“I want Daddy.”
“You don't need Daddy.”
“I do.”
“No, you don't.”
The recording ended.
I sat frozen.
My mother covered her mouth.
Claire whispered:
“She was doing it in front of us.”
Just outside the camera's frame.
While everyone was laughing.
The police obtained more evidence.
Our smart-home system had retained activity logs.
There were repeated periods when the hallway camera had been manually disabled.
Always during my work hours.
Always when Madison was alone with Olivia.
Then there were door-lock records.
The closet door had been opened and closed repeatedly.
I stared at the dates.
Some were from weeks earlier.
Before the wedding.
Before I called Madison my wife.
My attorney told me something else.
“She knew what she was doing.”
“What does that mean?”
“She may have deliberately built a relationship with you to gain access to your household.”
I felt sick.
The toy store.
The coffee.
The park.
The dinners.
The patience.
Had it all been an act?
I couldn't stop thinking about the first time Madison met Olivia.
She had known exactly how to make my daughter laugh.
Exactly how to make me trust her.
Maybe she had studied us.
Maybe she had been waiting.
That night, I received a message from an unknown number.
You don't know who you married.
I stared at it.
Then another message appeared.
Ask her about Daniel.
I looked at Claire.
“Who's Daniel?”
She shook her head.
“I don't know.”
May you like
The next morning, I started searching.
And what I found would change everything.
