Chapter 10: The Account That Could Not Be Repeated The Same Way
The interview room had no windows and nothing soft except the faded padding on four metal chairs. My sister sat beside me with both hands tucked under her legs, her light dress wrinkled from the ride. Dad stayed on her other side. Across the table, a uniformed officer placed the torn scrap of floral wallpaper inside a clear evidence sleeve without touching the strand caught along its edge.
I watched the plastic flatten around it. The scrap looked smaller under the fluorescent lights. It no longer resembled part of the mansion hallway. It looked like something anyone could dismiss as trash.
The officer asked me to begin with what I knew, not what I believed.
I told him we had been in the dim hallway. I had pushed my sister behind me because our stepmother was threatening her. I repeated the words exactly as I remembered them.
“Dead girls don't reveal family secrets, touch her again and everyone will know what you buried.”
The sentence sounded worse in that plain room. I did not explain what I thought it meant. When the officer asked what happened next, I said our stepmother had grabbed my arm and answered, “You'll be buried beside her.”
Dad shifted in his chair. My sister leaned against him, but her eyes remained on the evidence sleeve.
I described her pointing. First her hand had trembled. Then her finger had lifted toward the vintage floral wallpaper. I had followed it to the jagged tear and seen a distinct lock of blonde hair catching the weak hallway light.
The officer asked whether I had seen a body.
I said no.
He asked whether I had seen anyone put the hair there.
I said no again.
All I had seen was the hair coming through the torn wallpaper. Everything else—the shape I imagined behind the plaster, the reason our stepmother had threatened us, what might have happened to Mommy—belonged to fear. I wanted him to understand the difference because the difference was the only part of my account nobody could take from me.
The officer turned to my sister. He kept his voice low and did not move the evidence sleeve closer to her. She stared at the tabletop while he asked what she had said in the hallway.
“Dad, Mommy is still inside that wall.”
She offered nothing more. When another question came, she pressed her lips together and reached for my sleeve. I covered her hand with mine. The officer stopped instead of forcing the silence into a different answer.
Dad gave his account next. He said he had entered during the confrontation and had said, “Nobody touches my child.” He confirmed hearing my sister identify the wall. He did not claim he had seen what I saw before the torn place was disturbed. When asked what he believed was inside, he looked toward me, then toward my sister, and admitted that belief was not the same as witnessing it.
Our stepmother had been kept in a separate room, but the door opened while the officer was writing. Another uniformed adult stood with her in the hall. Her dark hair was still pulled back, and her blouse and skirt remained neat despite everything that had happened. She did not look at the evidence sleeve. She objected to anyone entering the mansion and denied that the children’s interpretation justified damaging the wall.
The officer did not argue about Mommy. He explained that the threats, the visible hair, the preserved trace, and the conflicting accounts required the original location to be examined. The wall had to remain untouched until access could be arranged.
Our stepmother’s expression tightened. Dad rose halfway from his chair, as if he expected her to cross the room, but the second officer stayed between her and the table.
A form was placed in front of Dad. The officer said the inquiry would begin with securing lawful access to the mansion and preserving the hallway. Until then, my sister and I were not to return there alone.
Dad signed.
May you like
The evidence sleeve disappeared into a rigid envelope. The officer sealed it, wrote the time across the edge, and carried it toward the door. Outside, our stepmother was already resisting the next step, forcing them to choose a route back into the house that did not depend on her permission.
The door closed before I heard which route they would take.
