Chapter 2 - The Phone Under the Floor
The first time I understood that my father had taught me how to survive, he had already been dead for three years.
His old phone was lying in my palm.
Cracked.
Dusty.
Almost useless.
Almost.
I had found it by accident.
Three months before the hospital, our attic smelled like cardboard and insulation.
I was looking for a blanket because Edric had turned the heat down again.
He did things like that when he was angry.
Small things.
Things nobody outside the house would call abuse.
No hot water.
No chargers.
No bedroom doors.
No internet.
No rides to school.
Nothing that left an obvious mark.
He believed deprivation worked better than shouting.
“You don’t need comfort,” he liked to say. “You need discipline.”
I had moved three boxes of Christmas decorations when I saw the old black phone wedged beneath a plastic wreath.
It belonged to Dad.
I recognized the scratched case immediately.
David Morgan had carried that phone everywhere during the last year of his life.
He worked for a forensic accounting firm that investigated fraud, corporate theft, and hidden financial networks.
When Chloe and I were children, we thought he was basically a detective with spreadsheets.
Dad hated that description.
Then he secretly loved it.
He would tap a pencil against the kitchen table and tell us, “Money tells stories. People just hope nobody reads carefully enough.”
After he died, most of his electronics disappeared.
Brenda said the company collected everything.
I never questioned it.
Until I found the phone.
That night, after Edric went downstairs, I plugged it into an old charger behind my desk.
The screen flickered.
A cracked apple-shaped pattern of light spread across the glass.
Then the home screen appeared.
No password.
That confused me.
Dad locked everything.
Then I noticed the phone was still connected to Wi-Fi.
Our Wi-Fi.
And one app was still signed in.
A cloud storage account.
MORGAN ARCHIVE.
I remembered the name.
Dad had once used it for family photographs.
I clicked it.
Most folders were locked.
One wasn’t.
AUTO UPLOAD.
I recorded ten seconds of myself whispering.
“Testing.”
A spinning symbol appeared.
Then:
UPLOAD COMPLETE.
I almost dropped the phone.
Dad had configured the device to upload audio automatically whenever it connected to a trusted network.
I didn’t know why.
Maybe work.
Maybe convenience.
Maybe paranoia.
But I knew exactly what I could use it for.
The first recording was terrible.
Edric had been downstairs talking to Brenda.
I slid the phone behind the heating vent and hit record.
Most of the audio captured the furnace rattling.
But through the noise, I could hear him.
“You need to stop letting them call Alan.”
Brenda said something too softly to understand.
Edric replied, “He puts ideas in their heads.”
Another pause.
Then:
“They’re almost eighteen. I’m not losing control of this house now.”
I listened to that sentence twenty times.
Not because it proved everything.
It didn’t.
But because it proved something.
Control.
That word again.
I started recording whenever I could.
Not the worst moments.
Those were too dangerous.
Sometimes the phone caught arguments.
Sometimes Edric lecturing our mother.
Sometimes him demanding passwords.
Sometimes him asking questions about Dad’s estate.
“When exactly does the trust mature?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
“You were his wife.”
“We were already separated before he died.”
“You signed paperwork.”
“I signed hundreds of things.”
Then Edric’s voice:
“Those shares are worth something.”
That recording changed everything.
Until then, I thought he hated us because we reminded him of Dad.
Then I began wondering whether money was part of it.
I knew about the trust.
Barely.
Dad had mentioned it before he died.
“Eighteen,” he told us. “Not seventeen. Not twenty-one. Eighteen.”
We were fourteen.
I asked what happened at eighteen.
“You get choices.”
Chloe asked, “What kind?”
He smiled.
“Your own.”
At the time, we thought he meant college money.
After his funeral, Uncle Alan told us Dad had created something more substantial.
Life insurance.
Company shares.
Investments.
He wouldn’t say how much.
He probably didn’t know.
Then Alan was deployed overseas.
At first, he called every Sunday.
Then every other Sunday.
Then not at all.
Brenda said military communications were difficult.
Edric said Alan didn’t care enough to make time.
I believed that for almost a year.
The police did not find the phone that night.
But they found something else.
A fresh muddy footprint beside the back door.
Officer Ramirez came into our hospital room at two in the morning.
Chloe was asleep again.
I wasn’t.
“Faye?”
I sat up slightly.
“Did you find it?”
“No.”
My chest tightened.
“But our officers found evidence someone entered the house after your family left.”
“Who?”
“We don’t know.”
“Edric?”
“He was here.”
“Mom?”
“She was here too.”
“Then who?”
“We’re checking.”
I looked at Chloe.
“Maybe he had someone go there.”
“That’s possible.”
“Can you prove it?”
Ramirez gave me a tired smile.
“That’s what investigations are for.”
I hated that answer.
I wanted certainty.
I wanted someone to say Edric was finished.
I wanted the kind of justice that happened in stories, where the villain made one mistake and everything ended.
Real life was slower.
By sunrise, the hospital had separated us completely.
Edric was no longer allowed near our room.
Brenda wasn’t either.
A child protective services investigator arrived, even though we were only months away from turning eighteen.
Her name was Marisol Chen.
She brought two paper cups of hot chocolate.
I didn’t trust her.
I didn’t trust anyone holding paperwork.
“Your mother and stepfather will not be taking you home today,” she told us.
Chloe stared at her.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re still working that out.”
“With strangers?”
“Possibly temporarily.”
“No.”
Chloe’s voice shook.
“I’m not leaving Faye.”
“You won’t.”
“How do we know?”
Marisol looked directly at her.
“Because I’m telling you that you stay together.”
Chloe glanced at me.
I nodded.
That was enough for the moment.
Later that morning, detectives interviewed us separately.
That terrified me.
Edric had spent years teaching us that separation was how people were broken.
Different rooms.
Different questions.
Different pressure.
Before they moved Chloe, she leaned toward me.
“Tell the truth.”
I almost smiled.
“You too.”
Detective Ramirez conducted my interview with another investigator named Jonah Wells.
They recorded everything.
“When did the physical abuse begin?” Wells asked.
I stared at the table.
“I don’t know.”
“Approximately.”
“Maybe two years ago.”
“Was it immediate after he moved in?”
“No.”
That was important.
Edric had been charming at first.
He fixed our kitchen sink.
He brought Brenda flowers.
He drove Chloe to soccer practice.
He helped me with math.
He waited.
Six months.
Maybe longer.
Then the rules started.
No locked bedroom doors.
No private calls.
No talking about “family matters.”
No visiting friends without permission.
No criticizing him.
No correcting Brenda.
No crying loudly.
No slamming doors.
No refusing eye contact.
No holding eye contact too long.
Eventually there were so many rules that breaking one became inevitable.
“What happened when you broke them?” Ramirez asked.
I answered carefully.
“He punished us.”
“How?”
I looked at the camera.
I didn’t want the worst moments to become someone else’s entertainment.
So I told them enough.
Confinement.
Threats.
Shoving.
Strikes.
Taking away food.
Breaking our phones.
Forcing us to stand still while he lectured us for hours.
Making one sister watch while he intimidated the other.
I left out details I couldn’t say yet.
Ramirez didn’t push.
“What did your mother do?”
“Usually nothing.”
“Did she ever intervene?”
I thought about it.
“Once.”
“What happened?”
“She told him to stop.”
“And?”
“He stared at her.”
“That’s all?”
“She apologized to him.”
Wells looked down.
That moment hurt more than if he had reacted.
“What about the trust?” Ramirez asked.
I explained what I knew.
“Did Edric know about it?”
“Not everything.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he kept asking Mom questions.”
“Did you record those conversations?”
“Yes.”
“On the missing phone?”
“Yes.”
Wells leaned forward.
“Any backups?”
“The cloud.”
“Do you know the password?”
“No.”
His face fell.
“But the phone uploaded automatically.”
“That doesn’t guarantee we can access the account.”
“My dad set it up.”
“We’ll need legal authorization and possibly cooperation from the provider.”
I stared at him.
“So it’s useless?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It sounds useless.”
Ramirez intervened.
“Faye, evidence takes time.”
“Edric doesn’t.”
She understood immediately.
That was what scared me.
If Edric was released before they understood what was on the recordings, he would start rewriting reality.
He had already done it before.
At school, he had told the guidance counselor Chloe was “emotionally volatile.”
He told our neighbor I was manipulative.
He told Brenda’s friends we resented him because we wanted our parents back together.
Dad was dead.
Even that didn’t stop him.
By afternoon, Edric’s attorney arrived.
His name was Charles Vane.
Expensive suit.
Perfect hair.
Quiet voice.
I saw him through the hall window.
He shook hands with Edric.
That was when I realized Edric had planned for this possibility.
Maybe not this exact night.
But something like it.
A confrontation.
A police visit.
An accusation.
He already had a lawyer’s number ready.
Detective Ramirez returned two hours later.
“Edric is claiming the recordings were fabricated.”
“You haven’t even heard them.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
I blinked.
“He’s guessing?”
“He’s preparing.”
That sounded exactly like him.
“What is Mom saying?”
Ramirez hesitated.
“She’s repeating the staircase story.”
Chloe, who had been allowed back into the room, turned her face toward the wall.
I asked, “Even now?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to hate Brenda.
Sometimes I did.
But underneath the anger was something worse.
Hope.
The stupid, humiliating hope that my mother would suddenly choose us.
That she would walk into the room and say, I lied. I’m sorry. Here’s the truth.
She didn’t.
That evening, investigators made progress with Dad’s cloud provider.
Apparently the account had something unusual attached to it.
A legal recovery contact.
Not Brenda.
Not me.
Not Chloe.
Alan Morgan.
Our uncle.
Ramirez sat beside my bed.
“We’re trying to reach him.”
“He’s overseas.”
“We know.”
“Where?”
“Germany currently.”
My heart stumbled.
“He’s alive?”
Ramirez looked confused.
“Of course.”
I felt foolish.
Edric had never told us Alan was dead.
He only implied distance.
Neglect.
Indifference.
Sometimes the best lies were built from silence.
“He stopped calling,” I whispered.
Ramirez said, “We’re checking that too.”
Two hours later, a technical analyst called the hospital.
I didn’t hear the whole conversation.
But I saw Ramirez’s expression.
She left our room.
Then came back with Wells.
Both looked energized.
“What?” I asked.
Wells pulled up a chair.
“The provider confirmed the archive still exists.”
I sat forward.
“All of it?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“The recordings?”
“Potentially.”
Chloe grabbed my hand.
Ramirez said, “Your father configured automatic redundancy.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“The phone wasn’t uploading to one folder.”
“How many?”
“At least three.”
I stared at her.
“That sounds like Dad.”
Wells almost smiled.
“There’s more.”
My heart began pounding.
“What?”
“The account metadata shows uploads going back three months.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s not all.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are older protected folders.”
“How old?”
Ramirez answered.
“Some were created before your father died.”
The room went silent.
I remembered Dad’s phone.
His strange warnings.
His insistence that records mattered.
Money tells stories.
People just hope nobody reads carefully enough.
I swallowed.
“What’s in them?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Can you open them?”
“We’re working on it.”
Then Wells looked at Ramirez.
Something passed between them.
“What?” Chloe asked.
Ramirez hesitated.
“There’s one more thing.”
I knew immediately it was bad.
“What?”
“The missing phone connected to Wi-Fi thirty-seven minutes ago.”
My entire body went cold.
“At our house?”
“No.”
“Where?”
Wells placed a map on the table.
A red marker appeared several miles away.
A commercial district.
I recognized the address.
Chloe did too.
Her face changed.
“That’s Edric’s office.”
Ramirez nodded.
The phone hidden under my floorboard had not disappeared randomly.
May you like
Someone had taken it directly to the one place Edric thought police would not search.
And whoever carried it there had just made the biggest mistake of their life.
