Chapter 3
The police separated us in our own living room.
Paramedics carried Claire out first.
She begged them not to take the children from her.
The little girl held my shirt so tightly the fabric stretched.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She looked at Caroline, who sat handcuffed near the fireplace.
Caroline’s eyes warned her.
I stepped between them.
“She can’t hurt you now.”
The girl swallowed.
“Mia.”
The little boy was Noah.
Claire kept saying they were mine.
I kept waiting for someone to tell me this was impossible.
But nobody did.
An officer named Detective Harris asked me when I had last renovated the house.
“Never,” I said. “We bought it five years ago.”
“Who handled the purchase?”
“My wife.”
Caroline laughed softly from across the room.
That laugh made my stomach twist.
Detective Harris looked at her.
“Mrs. Coleman, do you want to explain why three people were confined inside your walls?”
Caroline stared at me.
“They weren’t confined.”
Claire cried from the stretcher.
“She locked us in.”
“You came to my house,” Caroline snapped. “You ruined my marriage.”
“My children were hungry.”
My children.
The words landed like a stone in my chest.
Lily looked up at me.
“Daddy, is Mia my sister?”
I couldn’t answer.
At the hospital, doctors examined Claire, Mia, and Noah.
Malnutrition.
Dehydration.
Old bruises.
No fresh severe injuries, thank God, but enough neglect to make every nurse go silent.
A social worker asked me for consent to run DNA.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “I’ve never met Claire.”
Claire heard me.
Her eyes filled again.
“You did,” she whispered. “Before the accident.”
“What accident?”
She looked confused.
Then afraid.
“Caroline told me you remembered everything.”
I gripped the bed rail.
“What accident?”
Before Claire could answer, Detective Harris entered holding Caroline’s phone sealed in evidence.
“We found messages,” he said quietly.
“To who?”
He hesitated.
Then showed me one line.
If Ryan remembers Claire, everything is over.
The sender’s name was saved as Mom.
May you like
Caroline’s mother had died three years ago.
At least, that was what Caroline had told me.
