My mother arrived fifteen minutes later. She had been called but not given details over the phone, and when she walked in and read the room she went very quiet. I showed her the photos. I watched her face.
She didn’t make excuses.
“We’re calling the police,” Thomas said.
Steven changed then. The smooth composure dropped one layer and something colder replaced it. He tried to pivot — claiming that Lucy had been the one behaving strangely, that sleeping in our room every night was the aberration, that a wife ought to ask what her sister-in-law was doing in her marriage bed before she went digging through her husband’s belongings.I stepped closer to him.
“She came into my room because she was safer there,” I said. “That’s the whole story.”
The Phone Call, the Officers at the Door, and What Happened After
The officers arrived less than an hour later.
