The smoothie. The smoothie.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw the phone. I quietly slipped out of bed, leaving Mark snoring peacefully against his pillows, and walked out to the frozen backyard.
I dialed the unknown number. It rang four times before a terrified voice answered.
“Hello?”
“Miss Greenwood,” I said, recognizing the daycare teacher’s soft tremor. “It’s Sarah. Talk to me.”
She broke down in loud, jagged sobs. “I’m so sorry, Sarah. I’m so, so sorry. I reviewed the tapes the afternoon Ava… when she was taken. I saw the drink. But when I went to the director, Mark was already there.”
A cold dread coiled in my gut. “What do you mean Mark was there?”
“He came back to the daycare while you were still at the hospital,” she whispered, her voice thick with fear. “He was in the office with the director. He made a massive ‘donation’ to the school’s expansion fund on the spot. He told the director that the media would destroy the daycare’s reputation if it got out that a child fell ill on the premises. He said the cameras needed to be wiped to protect everyone. I was in the server room when they sent the IT guy in. I recorded the screen with my phone just seconds before they wiped the hard drives permanently.”
He had paid them off. While our daughter’s body was barely cold, my husband was negotiating hush money to destroy the evidence of his infidelity and his lethal negligence. It was the reason he had pushed so aggressively for the 24-hour cremation. He needed the physical evidence in her stomach turned to ash, and the digital evidence deleted, all before I could even process my grief.
“Miss Greenwood,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “Thank you.”
