Part 2 of 3

“I’m going home with Emma. You should stay somewhere else tonight.”

He stared at me.

“You’re kicking me out?”

“Yes.”

That was the first time in eight years that Ryan asked me to overlook something involving his mother and I simply refused.

He slept at a hotel.

Three days later, Detective Bennett called.

There had been a preliminary finding from the residue inside the bottle.

A sedating substance was present.

I sat at my kitchen table with the phone pressed to my ear while Emma colored beside me.

“What does that mean?”

“It means we have enough to keep investigating.”

“Was it in my sons?”

There was a pause.

“We’re waiting on confirmation from the medical examiner.”

I looked across the kitchen.

One of the twins’ clean bottles was still upside down on the drying rack.

I hadn’t been able to put it away.

“And Diane?”

“We executed a search.”

“Did you find anything?”

Another pause.

“We recovered an item from trash behind her residence. I can’t give you more than that yet.”

But I understood enough.

For the first time since the morning I found my sons, somebody was no longer telling me there might never be an answer.

There was something in the bottle.

And the police had found something behind Diane’s house.

The Comment Under the Funeral Video

I didn’t know anyone had recorded what happened at the funeral until my sister showed me the video.

Someone near the back of the sanctuary had caught the moment Diane came toward me and the seconds afterward when Ryan grabbed my arms. The video ended before Emma spoke, but that didn’t stop it from spreading through local Facebook groups.

I hated it.

People who had never met my sons were arguing about my marriage under a video taken feet from their caskets.

Then Detective Bennett called again.

“Have you seen the comments?”

“I stopped reading them.”

“There’s one I need to ask you about.”

She sent me a screenshot.

The account had no profile picture.

The comment contained one sentence.

Ask the police to check the other babies in that family.

I read it twice.

“What does that mean?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.”

The account disappeared before I could respond.

But Detective Bennett had already saved it.

Over the next few weeks, the investigation widened.

I learned about two incidents I had never heard discussed openly in Ryan’s family.

Years earlier, a relative’s infant had died under circumstances the family still described as unexplained. Another young child had been hospitalized after becoming extremely difficult to wake following an afternoon nap.

Neither incident proved anything about Diane.

Detective Bennett was careful about that.

But Diane had been present both times.

She had offered to watch both children.

And relatives remembered both children being unusually sleepy.

When I told Ryan, he sat at the far end of our couch without speaking.

He had come over to see Emma, and we had been trying to establish a routine where he could spend time with her while I remained nearby.

“Did you know?” I asked.

“Not like that.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

He stared at the floor.

“I knew my cousin’s baby died. I knew about Natalie going to the hospital.”

“Did you know your mother had been watching them?”

His silence answered me.

I stood and picked up the coffee mug in front of him.

“You need to leave.”

“Laura.”

“Not tonight.”

He stood too.

“I didn’t know there was anything to connect.”

“Maybe you didn’t.”

I carried his mug to the sink.

“But every time your mother crossed a line, you trained everyone around you not to look too closely.”

He didn’t argue.

That frightened me more than if he had.

Emma’s Secret Was Never Hers to Keep

Emma began seeing a child therapist twice a week.

For the first month, she asked me almost every night whether Grandma Diane was angry with her.

I always gave her the same answer.

“You are not responsible for a grown-up being angry because you told the truth.”

One evening she was sitting on the bathroom counter while I brushed her hair.

“Grandma said good girls can keep secrets.”

My hand stopped.

“When did she say that?”

“When she gave me the cookie.”

I put the brush down.

“What cookie?”

“The night the babies went sleepy.”

I sat beside her.

I wanted to ask a hundred questions.

I didn’t.

The therapist had taught me not to investigate through my daughter.

“Okay,” I said. “You can tell Ms. Kelly about that tomorrow.”

Emma nodded.

Then she asked, “Are surprises bad too?”

“No. Surprises end. Like a birthday present. Secrets that make you scared are different.”

She thought about that.

“So I can always tell you?”

“Always.”

That became our rule.

Ryan started therapy too.

He moved into a small apartment fifteen minutes away and stopped asking me to speak to his mother’s attorney. For the first time since I had known him, he stopped describing Diane as difficult, intense or misunderstood.

He began calling what she did by its actual name.

Still, that didn’t repair what had happened between us.

One afternoon, after Emma went to my sister’s house, Ryan stood in our kitchen looking at the unused high chairs.

“Do you think there’s any chance for us?”

I folded a dish towel.

“I don’t know.”

“I should have protected you.”

I looked at him.

“You should have believed me before it took this.”

He nodded.

There wasn’t anything else to say.

Then, six weeks after the funeral, Detective Bennett called and asked me to come to the station.