“Pending the toxicology report, yes. We can’t hold him,” she admitted.
“Keep him here. For one hour. Ask him about his finances, his affairs, make up whatever you have to. Just keep him in that room.”
“Why?” she narrowed her eyes.
“Because I’m going to get you your probable cause,” I said, a cold, hard resolve settling over my grief.
I drove to Derek’s house like a woman possessed. I still had the emergency key Jessica had given me years ago, hidden in the fake rock near the porch. I knew that entering the house without a warrant or permission was technically trespassing, maybe even burglary, and could render evidence inadmissible. I didn’t care. If Derek got home and destroyed it, justice would be permanently out of reach.
The house was eerily silent, smelling of expensive leather and bleach. Derek had cleaned.
I bypassed the pristine living room and headed straight for the basement stairs. The air grew colder as I descended into the darkness. I flicked on the single overhead bulb in the storage room.
There it was. Pushed against the back wall, obscured by boxes of winter coats and old tax files—the sunflower painting. It was nearly five feet wide.
I scrambled over the boxes, tearing my stockings, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I grabbed the heavy wooden frame and pulled it away from the wall.
Nothing. Just drywall.
“Dammit, Jessica,” I cried, hitting the wall. “Behind the sun. What did you mean?”
I looked at the back of the canvas itself. The wooden stretcher bars were thick. In the top right corner, directly behind where the largest, brightest sunflower was painted on the front, there was a small, rectangular lump beneath the canvas fabric, taped securely to the wood.
My hands shook as I peeled back the heavy-duty duct tape.
It was an old smartphone. One Jessica hadn’t used in three years. It was dead.
I ran upstairs to her home office, tearing through her desk drawers until I found a tangle of old charging cables. I plugged the phone into the wall outlet. The screen remained black for an eternity. Please, God. Please.
Finally, a faint white battery icon appeared. It booted up. There was no passcode; she had factory reset it before hiding it.
I opened the voice memos app. There was only one file. It was an hour long, recorded two nights ago. The night she died.
I pressed play.
For the first few minutes, there was just the rustle of fabric. She had hidden the phone in her pocket. Then, the sound of a door opening.
“Derek? We need to talk,” Jessica’s voice echoed in the quiet office. Hearing her alive, her voice thick with fear, was a knife twisting in my heart.
“I’m busy, Jess. What is it?” Derek’s voice was cold, impatient.
“I… I went to the doctor today. Derek, I’m pregnant. Four months.”
There was a long, terrifying silence on the recording.
“You’re what?” Derek’s voice dropped to a dangerous whisper. “We discussed this. We agreed. No children. My career is finally taking off, I am not throwing my money into a college fund.”
“It wasn’t planned! But Derek, it’s a baby. Our baby—”
“Get rid of it.”
“No! Derek, I’m sixteen weeks, I feel it moving, I will not—”
A loud smack made me jump. Jessica cried out.
“You stupid bitch,” Derek hissed. The sound of a scuffle, heavy footsteps, furniture crashing. “You did this on purpose to trap me! To ruin my life!”
“Derek, please! Don’t hit my stomach! Please!” Jessica was sobbing, begging.
“You want a baby? Let’s see how much you want it!”
The sounds that followed were the stuff of nightmares. The sickening thud of blows. Jessica gasping for air. “I can’t breathe… Derek, my neck… please…”
“Shut up! Shut up!”
Then, a heavy crash, like a body hitting the hardwood floor. A prolonged, agonizing silence.
“Jess? Get up.” Derek’s voice lost its rage, replaced by a sudden, clinical panic. “Jess. Hey. Wake up.”
More silence. Then, the sound of Derek pacing. He didn’t call 911. He paced for forty-five minutes. I listened to the monster calculate his alibi while my daughter lay dying on the floor. Only then did the audio capture the distant sound of him dialing the phone and putting on his hysterical, grieving husband act for the dispatcher.
I unplugged the phone, clutching it to my chest as if it were Jessica herself.
Headlights swept across the front window. A car door slammed in the driveway. Derek was home.
I stood at the top of the stairs as the front door unlocked. Derek walked in, loosening his tie, looking exhausted and profoundly arrogant. He had beaten the police. He thought he had won.
He froze when he saw me standing in the foyer, my arms crossed, the old cell phone in my hand.
“How did you get in here?” he demanded, his face darkening. “I am calling the police. You are trespassing.”
“I already called them, Derek,” I said softly.
Red and blue lights suddenly strobed through the front windows, painting the living room in flashes of urgency. Sirens wailed, abruptly cutting off as three police cruisers jumped the curb onto his pristine lawn.
“What did you do?” Derek took a step toward me, his fists clenching.
I held up the phone and pressed play.
“Derek, please! Don’t hit my stomach! Please!” Jessica’s recorded voice filled the room.
Derek stopped dead in his tracks. All the blood drained from his face, leaving him a hollow, terrified shell of a man. The pristine facade cracked and shattered into a million unrecoverable pieces.
The front door burst open. Detective Williams came in with her gun drawn. “Derek Miller, put your hands behind your head! Get on the ground!”
Derek didn’t fight. He dropped to his knees, his eyes locked on the phone in my hand, listening to his own monstrous voice seal his fate. As they cuffed him and dragged him out, he looked at me, weeping, snot running down his face.
“I didn’t mean to,” he blubbered. “It was an accident!”
I felt nothing for him. No pity. No rage. Just a cold, hard finality. I turned off the phone and handed it to Detective Williams.
“There’s your probable cause,” I said.
One year later.
The autumn sun was different this year—softer, golden, entirely devoid of the biting frost of the year prior. The cemetery was quiet, save for the rustle of dry leaves skittering across the manicured lawns.
I stood before the polished granite marker. Jessica Miller and Baby Angel. Safe in the Light.
Ethan stood beside me. He was eight now. He had grown taller, losing some of that haunting fragility that had defined him during the trial. Derek was in a maximum-security prison, serving consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. The recording had ensured the jury deliberated for less than an hour. He would rot there, a forgotten man in a concrete box.
Ethan unzipped his backpack and pulled out two vibrant yellow sunflowers. He stepped forward and carefully placed them on the grave. One on the left, one on the right.
“Happy Birthday, Mom,” Ethan whispered.
I put my arm around his shoulders, pulling him close. “It’s a beautiful day for a visit, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
Ethan nodded. Then, he didn’t look at the grave. He turned and looked at the empty space beside the large oak tree a few yards away. He stood perfectly still, his eyes tracking something I couldn’t see.
A gentle, warm breeze swept through the graveyard, carrying the scent of pine and sweet earth.
“What is it, Ethan?” I asked softly, my heart skipping a beat.
Ethan smiled, a genuine, bright expression that reached his eyes. “She’s not crying anymore, Grandma.”
“She isn’t?”
“No.” Ethan shook his head. “She’s wearing a white dress. She’s holding the baby. They both look really happy.”
Tears pricked my eyes, but they were tears of relief, not sorrow. “Is she saying anything?”
Ethan listened for a moment. Then, he looked up at me. “She says she has to go now. She says she’s been standing guard outside my door every night for a year, just in case the bad man came back. But she knows you’re here now. She knows I’m safe. So, she can finally go to sleep.”
I dropped to my knees, wrapping my arms tightly around my grandson, burying my face in his jacket. The heavy, suffocating weight that had pressed on my chest for twelve months finally, entirely, lifted.
“Tell her I love her,” I choked out. “Tell her I’ve got you. Forever.”
“She knows,” Ethan whispered, patting my back. “She says… goodbye.”
We walked back to the car in the golden afternoon light. I didn’t look back at the grave, because I knew there was no one left there to watch us leave. We were walking away from the dead, and finally, turning our faces toward the living.
