Chapter 4 - The Language of Evidence
Officer Miller looked from me to my mother. The comfortable, suburban familiarity in his expression began to erode. "Deborah? Is there a deadbolt on the outside of her door?"
"Of course not!" my mother gasped, adjusting her pearl earrings with trembling fingers. "It's a standard interior door! She’s hallucinating from the smoke inhalation!"
"The key is in her left jacket pocket," I said coldly. "And the digital logs of their text messages planning this are currently uploading to a secure server managed by a legal firm in Columbus. Maya Vance is the paralegal on record."
Jessica's face drained of all color. She turned to my mother, her voice dropping all its reality-TV bravado. "Mom... you said she didn't have a backup. You said she didn't know."
That was the fatal mistake. In her panic, the golden child had admitted there was something to know.
Officer Miller didn't hesitate. He called over two female officers. "Deborah, I need you to step away from the paramedics and hand over your purse and jacket, please."
"This is ridiculous! I am an educator! I teach yo
ur children!" my mother shrieked, her voice losing its clinical grace entirely, ascending into a shrill, terrifying register. "She is a liar! She’s always been a sick, twisted, ungrateful little monster!"
As the police moved in to restrain my mother and a crying Jessica, the paramedics lifted my stretcher into the back of the ambulance. Just before the doors closed, I watched the roof of the white house with the red front door collapse inward, sending a massive plume of sparks and black ash into the Ohio night sky.
The physical structure of my torment was burning to the ground, and for the first time in my life, I felt completely safe.
The next two weeks were a blur of sterile hospital walls, police interviews, and the soothing presence of Maya, who practically lived in the armchair next to my bed. She brought me real food, clothes that didn't smell like smoke, and her boss—a fierce, sharp-eyed defense attorney named Marcus Vance, who happened to be her uncle.
"The fire marshal found the accelerant in the hallway, Caitlyn," Marcus told me on my fourth day in the hospital, placing a thick folder on my tray table. "They also found the charred remains of the external deadbolt on your door frame. But the real nail in their coffin is the phone logs."
He opened the folder, revealing printed pages of text messages between Deborah and Jessica dating back six months.
Deborah: She’s getting too successful with her design business. She’s going to talk. People are starting to ask questions about why she doesn't come home for holidays. Jessica: Let her come for your birthday. We can fix it. The insurance on the house covers the contents anyway. We can say she had a breakdown and set it herself. Everyone knows she’s crazy.
I stared at the words. It was one thing to feel the cruelty of your family; it was another to see it typed out in Helvetica, formatted as evidence for a double-first-degree attempted murder trial.
May you like
"They're denying bail," Maya said gently, squeezing my hand. "The prosecutor is making an example of them. The 'Grace After Tragedy' English teacher is front-page news, Caitlyn. The whole state knows what she did."
I looked out the window at the morning sun hitting the hospital parking lot. "Good," I whispered. "Let them see the stains."
