Chapter 2 - HYPOTHERMIA AND FEVER
Emma’s core temperature was low when paramedics arrived.
Her skin was cold.
Her fever underneath complicated everything.
At the hospital, doctors treated:
Mild hypothermia.
Dehydration.
A respiratory infection that had already been diagnosed two days earlier.
No pneumonia.
No internal injury.
No permanent damage.
She had missed two doses of prescribed medication.
She had eaten almost nothing since breakfast.
“How long was she outside?” the emergency physician asked.
“I don’t know.”
Nora did.
“Almost three hours.”
I turned.
“What?”
Nora’s hands shook.
“She put her there around four.”
“Why didn’t you call police?”
“I tried to call you.”
“Why not 911?”
She looked ashamed.
“Ms. Harrington told me Emma was being disciplined and that if I interfered I’d be fired.”
My anger surged.
Then I remembered Emma’s gasp when I punched Diana.
I forced my hands open.
The physician continued:
“Three hours in this weather while ill could have become much more serious.”
“But she’ll be okay?”
“We expect so. We’re monitoring her.”
That sentence allowed me to breathe.
Detective Mara Ellis arrived with a child-protection investigator.
They separated everyone.
Good.
I gave my statement.
Including the punch.
“I hit Diana after Emma was free.”
“Was Diana physically attacking either of you at that moment?”
“No.”
“Could you have left?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will address that separately.”
“I understand.”
The detective looked almost surprised.
Maybe men in expensive suits usually had better excuses.
I didn’t.
I had lost control.
Diana had committed something monstrous.
Both could be true.
Emma’s forensic interview happened only after she was medically stable.
I waited outside.
Twenty-six minutes felt like hours.
When Ellis returned, she carried no dramatic expression.
“She says Diana chained her after she went into the garden cottage.”
“Why?”
“Emma says she found a little brass key in one of Natalie’s jewelry boxes.”
“What does it open?”
“She doesn’t know.”
“What happened next?”
“She says Diana saw it.”
“And?”
“Diana asked where the box was.”
“What box?”
“Emma called it Mommy’s red box.”
I had no idea what that meant.
Natalie owned hundreds of files.
Boxes.
Journals.
Legal folders.
She had worked as an attorney before becoming ill.
“Did Diana hurt her inside?”
“Emma says Diana grabbed her arm and searched her pockets.”
My jaw tightened.
“She hid the key before that?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“She won’t say yet.”
“Why?”
“She says Diana told her if anyone found it, ‘Daddy loses the house.’”
I stared.
“Our house?”
“Possibly.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Detective Ellis agreed.
“Which is why we don’t guess.”
Good.
Our current home was mine.
I bought it seven years before meeting Diana.
Natalie and I had lived there.
No mortgage dispute.
No obvious connection.
Then police searched the property.
The chain.
Lock.
Kennel.
Cottage.
Diana’s rooms.
Her phone was seized under warrant after officers reviewed preliminary evidence.
She was arrested for unlawful restraint, child endangerment, and related offenses.
No attempted murder charge.
No starvation fantasy inflated beyond evidence.
Specific conduct.
Specific charges.
Nora gave a full statement.
She said Diana had denied Emma lunch.
Then dinner.
“She kept saying Emma would eat after she told the truth.”
“What truth?”
“Where she put the key.”
The motive tightened.
At midnight, Emma woke.
“Daddy?”
“I’m here.”
She looked at the hospital room.
“Is Diana coming?”
“No.”
“Promise?”
“I can promise she cannot just walk in here. There are police and hospital rules.”
I had learned quickly not to promise the entire future.
Emma nodded.
Then:
“She said Mommy left a bad thing.”
“What bad thing?”
Emma’s eyes closed again.
“The red box.”
I stroked her hair.
“Do you know where it is?”
She nodded weakly.
“Did you tell Diana?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Mommy wrote my name.”
My heart stopped.
May you like
Natalie had been dead two years.
Yet somewhere in our garden cottage was a box addressed to our daughter that I had never seen.
