Chapter 3 - MARIA RAN TOWARD THE BLOWParamedics arrived within minutes.
Maria sat on the marble floor while they examined her shoulder.
Hazel refused to leave her side.
Jonathan knelt beside his daughter.
“Are you hurt?”
Hazel shook her head.
“Because Maria covered me.”
Jonathan looked at the housekeeper.
“Did the club hit anywhere else?”
“No,” Maria said through the pain.
The paramedic carefully moved her arm.
Maria gasped.
“There may be a fracture.”
Hazel began crying harder.
Maria immediately softened her voice.
“I’m all right, pequeña.”
“You screamed.”
“It hurt. But I’m here.”
Jonathan touched Hazel’s hair.
“What happened before I came in?”
Hazel looked toward Celeste.
Her stepmother stood near the kitchen entrance with her arms crossed.
A police officer remained beside her.
Hazel lowered her voice.
“She’ll be angry.”
“She cannot touch you.”
“She said you would send me away.”
Jonathan’s face changed.
“When?”
“Lots of times.”
Celeste heard.
“That is not true.”
The officer stopped her from approaching.
Jonathan turned back to Hazel.
“Did she say it tonight?”
“She said I would go to the school if I caused one more problem.”
“What school?”
Hazel looked at Maria.
The housekeeper answered.
“Blackwood Academy.”
Jonathan knew the name.
It was a residential behavioral school in another state.
Celeste mentioned it months earlier after Hazel began having nightmares.
Jonathan rejected the idea.
“Why was she still talking about it?”
Maria looked toward the paramedics.
She had kept silent too long.
“Mrs. Whitlock completed an application.”
Jonathan stood.
“How do you know?”
“I found it on the printer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Three weeks ago. I left an envelope in your study.”
Jonathan remembered an envelope Celeste handed him before a business trip.
She said it contained duplicate household bills and threw it away.
He had not opened it.
Celeste had intercepted Maria’s warning.
“Anything else?” Jonathan asked.
Maria hesitated.
“Tell him,” Hazel whispered.
Maria looked at Celeste.
“Mrs. Whitlock has been recording Hazel’s worst moments.”
Jonathan frowned.
“For what purpose?”
“To prove she is dangerous.”
Celeste laughed from across the room.
“She throws objects and screams. I was documenting behavior.”
“You created the behavior,” Maria said.
Celeste’s eyes narrowed.
Maria continued.
“She wakes Hazel during the night, takes away things that belonged to her mother and tells her you will stop loving her if she complains.”
Jonathan looked at Hazel.
The child’s silence confirmed it.
The paramedics lifted Maria onto a stretcher.
Hazel held her hand until the last possible moment.
“Are you coming back?”
Maria looked at Jonathan.
“That will be your father’s decision.”
“No,” he said.
“It will be yours.”
Maria stared at him.
“If you want to return, this remains your home and your job. Celeste will not be here.”
The police officer approached Jonathan.
The kitchen camera appeared to have been deliberately disabled.
Without footage of the beginning, Celeste claimed Maria attacked first.
Jonathan looked at the dark camera.
Then Maria spoke from the stretcher.
“She forgot about the backup.”
Celeste’s face became pale.
“What backup?” Jonathan asked.
Maria pointed toward the black marble island.
May you like
“The cup wasn’t the only thing Hazel dropped.”
Beneath the counter, partially hidden by spilled juice, lay a small digital recorder.
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