Chapter 1
I held Vanessa’s phone in one hand while water ran from the overturned gardening cart into the flower bed.
“Let’s see what this phone caught that’s got you shaking.”
Vanessa went pale.
That reaction mattered more than anything she could say.
Behind me, Claire kept Audrey wrapped in a dry patio towel. My daughter’s wet hair clung to her cheeks, and the gauze over one eyebrow had darkened where water reached the old stain beneath it.
Vanessa pointed at the phone.
“Damian, give me that.”
I looked at her.
“No.”
Her mouth tightened.
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
I unlocked the screen.
No passcode.
Interesting.
The fresh photograph was still open.
Audrey stood beside the flower bed three minutes before I entered. Her dress was dry. The patio beneath her feet was dry.
And the gauze on her eyebrow was already stained.
Vanessa had told me that wound came from Audrey falling earlier that morning.
The photograph did not disprove that.
What caught my attention was something behind Audrey.
A wooden stake had been pushed halfway across the garden path.
Low enough for a child to trip over.
I enlarged the image.
Vanessa saw what I was looking at.
Her breathing changed.
I turned toward the patio.
The stake was gone.
“Claire.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Was that there when you came outside?”
She stared at the photo.
“No.”
Vanessa laughed too quickly.
“It’s gardening equipment.”
“Then where is it now?”
Silence.
Audrey’s small voice came from behind me.
“She moved it after I fell.”
Everything inside me went cold.
I looked at my wife.
The hose had not caused the first injury.
It had only created the second scene.
I swiped left.
Another photograph appeared.
Audrey at the top of the terrace steps two weeks earlier.
A toy carriage lay directly behind her heel.
Then another.
Audrey beside the pool.
A towel twisted around one ankle.
Another.
Audrey near the greenhouse door with a broken flowerpot positioned beside her shoe.
Different days.
Different “accidents.”
Same photographer.
Vanessa.
And suddenly I understood why she had tried so desperately to reach the phone.
May you like
She had not been documenting Audrey’s falls.
She had been preparing them.
