Chapter 4: The Broken Mirror
By midnight, Daniel was standing in my small living room. He looked battered. He had taken the first available flight out of Chicago, where he had been on a business trip, and the exhaustion was etched deep into his face.
He walked straight to the spare bedroom where Ruby was sleeping soundly, her breathing deep and natural for the first time in weeks. He knelt by the bedside, kissed her forehead, and stayed there in the dark for nearly twenty minutes.
When he finally came out, he collapsed onto my old plaid sofa and buried his face in his hands.
"How did it get this bad, Dad?" he whispered.
I handed him a cup of black coffee and sat in the armchair opposite him. "You couldn't have known, Daniel. She was careful."
"I should have known," he insisted, his voice thick with guilt. "The school called me three weeks ago. They said Ruby was falling asleep at her desk. Vanessa told me she was just having trouble adjusting to the new grade, that she was staying up late reading. But then I noticed things missing from the medicine cabinet. I asked Vanessa about it, and she got so defensive... that's why I put the camera in. I thought maybe she was taking something herself. I never... I never dreamed she was giving it to Ruby."
"Why?" I asked, the question that had been burning in my mind since the clinic. "Why would she do that to her own child?"
Daniel stared at his coffee cup. "Control. Vanessa wanted her life to look perfect on the outside. But Ruby has been struggling with some behavioral changes, being a bit more stubborn, acting like a normal seven-year-old. Vanessa couldn't handle the messiness of it. She wanted a quiet, compliant child she could show off when she wanted, and put to sleep when she didn't."
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The sheer coldness of it made my stomach turn. Vanessa hadn't been trying to hurt Ruby out of malice; she had been treating her daughter like an inconvenient piece of furniture.
"The police found four empty bottles of high-dose sleep aids hidden in her vanity," Daniel added quietly. "The district attorney is looking at felony child endangerment charges."
