Chapter 7: What Anna Left Behind
I sat on the edge of Lily's hospital bed and tried to keep my voice steady.
"Did Mom say anything else about the recording?
About why she was teaching you?"
Lily thought about it the way she always did, her eyes going slightly up and to the left.
"She said sometimes grown-ups forget things that are important," Lily said.
"She said if I ever heard something that felt wrong, I should press the button and save it.
So we could remember it together later."
Anna had taught our eight-year-old daughter to document evidence.
Three weeks before she d*ed.
I picked up my phone and called Detective Collins.
She answered on the second ring.
"She knew," I said.
"Anna knew something was wrong before she went into the hospital.
She taught Lily how to use the recording function on the watch.
Deliberately.
Three weeks before she d*ed."
A pause.
"Are you saying Anna may have left other recordings?"
"I don't know.
I need to check the watch's storage."
"Don't touch it," Collins said immediately.
"Don't access the storage yourself.
Bring it to me.
If there's anything on that device, we need it preserved correctly or it won't be admissible." Another pause.
"Daniel.
If Anna recorded something before she d*ed — something about Evelyn, about Michael, about what she'd discovered — that changes the entire shape of this case."
"I know."
"Bring me the watch tonight.
I'll meet you at the station when Lily is discharged."
I hung up.
Lily was watching me with that steady gaze she'd had since the moment Evelyn walked into this room.
Too steady.
Too old.
"Is Mom going to help us?" she asked.
My throat closed.
"Yeah, bug," I said.
"I think she might be."
The hospital discharged Lily at seven-thirty that evening.
I carried her out in my arms even though she was old enough to walk, because I needed to feel the weight of her.
The night air was cold.
She pressed her face against my shoulder.
At the station, Collins met us in the lobby with a technician from the digital forensics unit.
They took the smartwatch carefully, signed it into evidence, and gave me a receipt.
The technician said they would begin the extraction immediately.
Collins walked us to a small waiting room with a couch and a vending machine.
"This could take a few hours," she said.
"You're welcome to wait here."
"We'll wait," I said.
Lily fell asleep against my side at nine o'clock.
I sat in the fluorescent quiet of the waiting room and thought about Anna.
About the restaurant photograph.
About the lawyer she'd gone to meet three weeks before she d*ed, in the building where Michael's LLC had been registered.
About what she must have known, and what she must have felt, sitting across from a stranger with a document between them, trying to protect something she could feel slipping away.
At ten forty-five, Collins came back.
She sat down across from me.
She set her notepad on the cushion beside her and didn't open it.
"The watch had eleven recordings in a protected folder," she said.
"Lily had never accessed it.
The folder was created by Anna fourteen months ago, approximately one week before her first hospitalization."
Fourteen months ago.
The same month Michael had registered the LLC.
"What's on them?" I asked.
"We've only reviewed three so far." Collins looked at me directly.
"Daniel, the first recording is a conversation between Anna and Evelyn.
It was recorded without Evelyn's knowledge.
In it, Evelyn tells Anna that she has documentation proving Daniel has been mismanaging the trust.
She tells Anna that if Anna doesn't agree to quietly support a petition for Evelyn to take over as trustee, Evelyn will go to the court and have Daniel removed publicly." Collins paused.
"And she tells Anna that she has already spoken to Michael, and that Michael has confirmed Daniel's instability."
"Michael told Evelyn I was unstable," I said.
"Before Anna d*ed.
Before any of the custody reports.
He was feeding Evelyn information about you from inside your own house." Collins picked up her notepad.
"The second recording is Anna, alone, speaking directly to Lily.
She explains that she is leaving the recordings in a protected folder.
She tells Lily that if anything ever happens, and if Lily ever feels unsafe, she should find a way to let the recordings be heard." Collins's voice was careful and even.
"She says — and I'm reading directly — 'You are the bravest person I know, and I need you to be brave one more time.'"
The waiting room was very quiet.
Lily was asleep against my side, her breathing slow and even.
"The third recording," Collins said, "is Anna reading a list of dates, amounts, and account numbers.
Fourteen transactions.
Going back twenty-two months."
"Twenty-two months," I said.
"That's before Michael moved in."
"Yes." Collins closed the notepad.
"Anna had been tracking this for almost two years.
She knew about the LLC.
She knew about the forged signatures.
She had account numbers, transfer dates, and the name of the law firm." She looked at me.
"She built the entire case.
She just never got the chance to use it."
I looked down at my daughter's sleeping face.
Anna had known she was running out of time.
She had taken everything she'd found and she had hidden it in the one place no one would think to look.
Not in a blue folder in a desk drawer.
Not in a lawyer's office.
In a child's smartwatch.
In the hands of the person she trusted most in the world.
She had trusted Lily to carry it.
And Lily had.
May you like
"What happens now?" I asked.
"Now," Collins said, "we use what Anna left us."
