“Why didn’t you call the police?” Detective Hale asked him.
Ethan stared down at the table.
“Because then I’d have to explain what I was doing at a gas station with Claire at six-thirty at night.”
Detective Hale just looked at him.
“So you concealed a vehicle theft,” he said slowly. “For six hours. Because you didn’t want your wife to find out about your affair.”
Ethan lowered his head.
“Yes, sir.”
I almost laughed. It came up in my throat and I had to swallow it.
Patricia didn’t laugh. She sat next to her son, white as paper, completely silent.
Detective Hale set down his pen. He looked around the table at all four of us.
Then he looked at me.
“Mrs. Carter. Is there anything else you think we should know?”
This was the moment.
I took my phone out of my pocket.
“Yes,” I said.
Patricia’s eyes went to my phone.
I opened the video. I set the phone in the middle of the table and turned it so everybody could see.
There was my driveway. The rain. My blue Subaru.
And Patricia. In her gray raincoat. Crouched down beside my front wheel.
Ethan leaned in.
“What is that?” he said slowly. “Why is Mom in our driveway?”
I pressed play.
The sound of rain filled the conference room. Then a small metallic sound.
Patricia shot up out of her chair so fast it tipped over backward and hit the floor.
“That isn’t what it looks like!”
Detective Hale reached over and paused the video.
“Mrs. Carter,” he said to Patricia. “Sit down.”
She didn’t.
Ethan was staring at the frozen image of his mother.
“Mom?”
Patricia was shaking her head. Back and forth. Back and forth.
“I was protecting you.”
“By doing something to Rachel’s brakes?”
Patricia turned and looked at me. And her face showed something I’d seen glimpses of for three years. But never this naked.
Pure hatred.
“She was destroying this family,” Patricia said.
Detective Hale stood up.
“Everybody stop talking. Right now.”
He walked out of the room to make a phone call.
I thought that was the worst thing I’d hear that night.
I was wrong.
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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