Chapter 7 - I TOUCH THE LAPTOP
I was discharged without Leonie.
Not permanently.
Physically.
Because she remained under secure hospital observation until identity confirmation.
Leaving a maternity hospital without the baby I had delivered felt like walking out without an organ.
Caius came with me.
My mother stayed at our house.
Aloysius was under a temporary no-contact order after the assault on Caius.
Police instructed me not to disturb his locked office if evidence might be relevant.
I understood.
Then at 1:20 a.m., I walked past it.
The door was open.
Aloysius had left his laptop on the desk.
Not locked.
Shared marital home.
Shared network.
I knew the password.
I stood there.
Then sat.
That was my mistake.
I told myself:
I need to know whether he planned this.
Police have his phone.
They don’t have every cloud file.
What if something disappears?
So I opened the laptop.
Search history.
Notes.
Cloud drive.
I typed:
clubfoot.
Dozens of results.
Medical articles.
Parent forums.
Then a note titled:
OPTIONS.
I opened it.
The sync icon changed.
My stomach dropped.
I knew enough technology to realize I had altered access metadata.
Still, I kept reading.
Under OPTIONS:
Ask about correction immediately.
No public photos until foot fixed.
Second opinion.
Do not let Jessamy make this family’s identity.
Then another note:
Hospital system relies on bands. Need know discharge verification.
My heart pounded.
I photographed the screen with my phone.
Then opened browser history.
That changed timestamps too.
I screen-recorded.
Then I called my attorney.
Marissa Vale answered at 1:34 a.m.
“What did you do?”
“I opened his laptop.”
Silence.
“Stop touching it.”
“I found—”
“Stop.”
I moved my hands away.
“Police said not to disturb the office.”
“The door was open.”
“That does not make metadata immortal.”
“I was scared he’d delete something.”
“He is under a court order and police can preserve cloud accounts.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You did not ask.”
There.
I closed nothing.
Touched nothing else.
Police came.
Photographed the laptop in place.
Forensic examiner imaged it.
I gave a full statement about exactly what I had opened.
No deleting my own browser trail.
No pretending.
The original cloud provider later supplied server-side logs showing file creation dates independent of my access.
Good.
The evidence survived.
But Aloysius’s lawyer now had a real argument:
Jessamy accessed the device before forensic collection.
That would appear at every hearing.
My fear had complicated the case.
Not destroyed it.
Complicated.
Then the note itself.
OPTIONS did not say:
switch babies.
It said:
Hospital system relies on bands.
Ugly.
Not enough alone.
There were more files on the device.
Police would examine them properly.
I went to bed.
Caius slept beside me.
At 3:00 a.m., he woke.
“Baby?”
“Still hospital.”
“Dad?”
“Not here.”
Then:
“Did I do good?”
My throat tightened.
“You told the truth.”
“Good?”
“You should never have had to do any of it.”
He nodded.
May you like
Then went back to sleep.
I did not.
