Chapter 4: The Search
The officers who entered my hospital room did not linger for a family conference.
They confirmed identities, noted the ongoing recording with Diana’s acknowledgment, and stepped back into the corridor to coordinate with the team already at the suburban address. Mason’s voice rose once—protest, confusion, the beginning of a narrative about misunderstandings—then lowered when no one in uniform treated the situation as a private dispute that could be settled with a closed door. Beatrice tried concern. Richard tried silence. Neither rewrote the medical chart or the neighbor’s call from before sunrise.
May you like
Diana stayed when they were escorted out for formal interviews. She played back the relevant portion of the recording only long enough for me to confirm accuracy, then secured the file. My documents, she said, were among the first items the search warrant had listed. Bank cards, identification, the phone they had kept “for my own good”—if those objects were in the house, they would be logged. If financial records showed the control Mason had described over dinner while I lay on the kitchen floor, those patterns would be preserved too.
I asked about my parents. Diana said they were already on their way. For the first time in months the idea of their faces did not arrive filtered through Beatrice’s rules about who was allowed to upset me.
