CHAP 3 — The Speakerphone
Daniel laughed.
Not nervously.
Not kindly.
He laughed like I had just reached for a toy sword.
“Your father?” he said. “The public service guy?”
I held his stare.
“Call him.”
Victoria scoffed from behind him.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Daniel. Don’t indulge her.”
But Daniel was arrogant enough to enjoy humiliating me.
He wanted my father to hear me crying. He wanted another man to tell me to calm down. He wanted witnesses to my powerlessness.
That was Daniel’s mistake.
He tapped my contact list and found Dad.
Not Chief Justice Carter.
Not Samuel Carter.
Just Dad.
He hit call and put it on speaker.
The phone rang twice.
Then my father answered.
“Emily?”
His voice changed the moment he heard my breathing.
“What happened?”
Daniel smirked.
“Mr. Carter, this is Daniel. Emily is having a little holiday meltdown. She knocked over some plates and now she’s threatening to call police.”
My father did not respond immediately.
In the quiet, I heard him inhale once.
Then his voice came through the speaker, low and unmistakably controlled.
“Where is my daughter?”
Daniel’s smile faltered.
“On the kitchen floor. She’s fine.”
I whispered, “Dad, I’m bleeding.”
The room changed.
Even Victoria uncrossed her arms.
My father’s voice became something I had heard only once in court when I was sixteen and sat in the back during oral arguments.
Not loud.
Worse.
Absolute.
“Daniel Mercer, listen carefully. This is Chief Justice Samuel Carter. You will put that phone where my daughter can reach it. You will call 911 on another line immediately. If you or your mother touched my daughter, your career is finished.”
Daniel’s face emptied.
The smirk vanished as if someone had wiped it away.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Daniel stared at the phone like it had betrayed him.
Victoria whispered, “Chief Justice?”
My father continued.
“I am already contacting emergency services. Do not move Emily unless instructed. Do not clean the kitchen. Do not touch the broken dishes. Do not speak to her except to ask what she medically needs. And Daniel?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Yes, sir?”
“I will not interfere with the legal process. I won’t need to. Your own conduct will do that for me.”
The phone slipped from Daniel’s hand and clattered onto the tile beside the blood.
From the dining room, voices had gone quiet.
Guests had heard.
A man asked, “Did he say Chief Justice Carter?”
Victoria stepped backward.
“No,” she whispered. “No, this is ridiculous.”
I reached for the phone with trembling fingers.
“Dad.”
“I’m here,” he said, voice softening instantly. “Stay with me, Em. Help is coming.”
That broke me.
Not because I was afraid.
Because for the first time all day, someone believed me without asking me to perform injury well enough to deserve care.
Daniel stood frozen while Victoria began whispering frantic instructions.
“Say she fell. Daniel, say she fell.”
My father heard that too.
“Mrs. Mercer,” he said through the speaker, “keep talking. This call is being recorded.”
Victoria’s mouth snapped shut.
May you like
Sirens began in the distance.
For the first time since I married Daniel, his mother looked afraid of someone other than herself.
