Chapter 4 - The House of Perfect Lies
Police searched our house three days after the hospital.
I did not go with them.
I couldn’t.
Just imagining the front door made my chest tighten.
Instead, Detective Ramirez asked if I would help remotely.
She sat with me at a temporary foster placement where Chloe and I were staying with a licensed emergency guardian named Teresa Hill.
Uncle Alan was petitioning for temporary custody, but paperwork moved slower than fear.
Teresa lived in a small blue house with too many plants and a golden retriever named Baxter who seemed personally offended whenever anyone stopped petting him.
The first night there, Chloe and I slept in the same bed.
Not because there wasn’t another room.
Because neither of us wanted a closed door between us.
Ramirez showed us photographs as officers documented the house.
Kitchen.
Living room.
Hallway.
Upstairs.
My bedroom.
Chloe’s.
The images looked ordinary.
That was Edric’s greatest talent.
Normality.
The couch was clean.
The dishes were washed.
Family photographs sat on the mantel.
In one picture, Edric had his arm around Brenda.
Chloe and I stood beside them.
We were smiling.
A perfect family.
That photograph had been taken twelve minutes after Edric told Chloe she was ruining Christmas.
Nobody looking at it would know.
Police found locks on several interior doors.
Edric claimed they were for “privacy.”
Investigators found damaged phone chargers and two old cell phones in a kitchen drawer.
Their SIM cards had been removed.
Edric said we broke them ourselves.
Then they found something stranger.
A folder in his home office labeled EDUCATION.
Inside were school reports.
Counselor notes.
Printouts about guardianship and conservatorship.
Documents describing circumstances under which an adult could seek financial control over someone deemed incapable of managing assets.
When Ramirez showed me the photograph, I stared at the page.
“He was planning it.”
“We think he was researching options.”
“He wanted to control the trust after eighteen.”
“That appears possible.”
Chloe sat beside me.
“He kept saying I was unstable.”
“Yes.”
“He needed people to believe it.”
Ramirez did not answer immediately.
Then she said, “That’s one interpretation supported by what we’re finding.”
I appreciated that she never pretended evidence proved more than it did.
Edric’s lawyer did the opposite.
Charles Vane held a press conference.
A press conference.
We saw part of it on television before Teresa turned it off.
Vane stood outside a courthouse and described Edric as “a devoted family man facing sensational accusations from traumatized teenagers.”
He did not name us because we were minors.
Everyone in our town knew anyway.
He said the recordings were “selectively edited.”
He said the police investigation was “premature.”
He said Edric had been attempting to “protect vulnerable stepchildren.”
I expected to panic.
Instead, Chloe threw a pillow at the television.
Teresa stared at her.
Chloe said, “Sorry.”
Teresa picked up the pillow.
“Next time use this one. It’s cheaper.”
For the first time in weeks, we laughed.
It felt wrong.
Then it felt necessary.
Investigators interviewed neighbors.
Most said Edric was polite.
Some said helpful.
One called him “strict but caring.”
Then Mrs. Alvarez gave a second statement.
This time she remembered something she had dismissed months earlier.
A delivery driver.
A man in a brown jacket who frequently brought packages to Edric’s office.
One evening, Mrs. Alvarez saw him enter our backyard through the side gate.
She thought he was doing maintenance.
Police checked security footage from nearby houses.
A man matching the description had entered our property the night we went to the hospital.
He stayed less than twelve minutes.
Then drove directly to Edric’s office.
His name was Nathan Pryce.
He worked as an administrative assistant for Edric’s consulting business.
When police questioned him, he initially denied everything.
Then investigators showed him traffic-camera footage.
His story changed.
Edric had called him from the hospital parking lot before police fully separated everyone.
I felt sick when I heard that.
In those few minutes before Dr. Cooper locked the room, Edric had already acted.
He told Pryce to go to the house and retrieve “a company device” from upstairs.
Pryce claimed he did not know the phone belonged to me.
He took it to the office and left it in Edric’s desk.
Then Edric allegedly called again and gave him instructions to erase it remotely.
Pryce refused to admit doing that.
Technical records suggested somebody tried.
The lie was collapsing.
But not fast enough.
Edric had not been charged with everything investigators were examining.
Vane argued that Pryce acted independently.
He claimed the phone contained illegally recorded private conversations.
He attacked chain of custody.
He attacked context.
He attacked me.
Not directly.
Never directly.
He used legal language.
He suggested “one of the twins” had manipulated audio.
I knew he meant me.
Faye the quiet one.
Faye the cold one.
Faye the planner.
He turned my survival strategy into proof that I was dangerous.
For a day, it worked on me.
I stopped talking.
Alan noticed.
He found me sitting on Teresa’s back porch after midnight.
“You believe him?”
“No.”
“Then why are you hiding?”
“I’m not.”
“You haven’t spoken more than ten words all evening.”
“That’s normal for me.”
“No, it isn’t.”
I looked at him.
“You barely know me anymore.”
His face fell.
I immediately regretted it.
But he nodded.
“You’re right.”
That made me angrier.
“Stop agreeing with me.”
He almost smiled.
“Can’t. You sound like David.”
I looked away.
“He would have known what to do.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Faye, your father was smart. He wasn’t magic.”
I said nothing.
Alan leaned on the railing.
“You made recordings because you were scared nobody would believe you.”
“Yes.”
“You remembered cloud backups.”
“Yes.”
“You told the doctor enough to start something.”
“I barely spoke.”
“You spoke.”
I swallowed.
“You’re giving your father credit for choices you made.”
That sentence stayed with me.
The next morning, I asked Ramirez to show me the house photos again.
I looked carefully.
Dad used to play a game with us called What Changed?
He would place five objects on a table.
We closed our eyes.
He removed one.
Then we guessed.
Chloe hated it.
I loved it.
Now I studied my bedroom photograph.
Desk.
Bed.
Bookshelf.
Heating vent.
Loose floorboard.
Something bothered me.
“What?” Ramirez asked.
“I don’t know.”
I zoomed in.
“Can you show the original crime-scene photo from before they moved anything?”
She found it.
There.
My desk chair.
Wrong position.
“That chair shouldn’t be there.”
“Why?”
“I always keep it under the desk.”
“Maybe Pryce moved it.”
“Maybe.”
Then I noticed a thin scratch on the wall.
Near the vent.
A nail.
No.
A picture hook.
I had hung a framed photograph there months earlier.
Dad, Chloe, and me at the beach.
After Edric smashed the frame during an argument, I hid the photograph.
“Can officers check behind the baseboard?”
Ramirez looked at me.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That was true.
But Dad had always said people hid things in obvious places because complexity made them feel safe.
Police checked.
They found nothing behind the baseboard.
I felt foolish.
Then one officer noticed the wall outlet was newer than the others.
An electrician was called.
Behind the faceplate was a tiny memory card.
Not mine.
I stared at the photograph Ramirez sent.
“What is that?”
“We don’t know yet.”
It contained audio.
Older than my recordings.
Much older.
Some files dated back almost eighteen months.
I had never put anything there.
Neither had Chloe.
Then we heard Brenda’s voice.
She was alone in our kitchen.
Crying.
“I’m recording this because I’m scared I’ll forget what happened.”
I froze.
Chloe grabbed my arm.
Mom.
The recording continued.
“Edric says I misunderstand him. He says I make him angry. He says the girls provoke him.”
A pause.
“I know that isn’t true.”
My throat closed.
Another file.
“I should leave.”
Another.
“He asked about David’s trust again.”
Another.
“He says once the girls turn eighteen, everything changes.”
Another.
“If something happens, I want there to be proof that I knew.”
Chloe started shaking.
“She knew.”
I whispered, “Yes.”
She knew.
Not vaguely.
Not partially.
She knew enough to hide a recording device.
And she stayed.
That truth hurt differently.
It was no longer possible to tell myself Brenda had simply been manipulated beyond understanding.
She had understood.
She had documented.
Then she had continued protecting him.
Detective Ramirez said, “This could become significant evidence.”
I barely heard her.
“Why didn’t she use it?”
“We’ll ask.”
When confronted, Brenda broke down.
But she still would not fully confess.
She said she was afraid.
She said Edric controlled finances.
She said he threatened to destroy us socially.
She said she believed leaving would make him worse.
Some of that may have been true.
But Chloe asked the question I couldn’t.
“Why did she lie at the hospital?”
Ramirez had no answer.
Only Brenda did.
And Brenda was still choosing silence.
That night, investigators processed the memory card.
Most files were intact.
Except one.
The newest.
Its filename matched a date from six days before the hospital.
The file existed.
The data did not.
Someone had deleted it.
I stared at the empty entry.
“What was recorded that day?” Wells asked.
I thought back.
Six days earlier.
Saturday.
Edric had called Brenda into his office.
They argued for almost an hour.
I stood at the top of the stairs.
I remembered one sentence.
Not all of it.
Just enough.
Brenda had shouted:
“I won’t let you do that to them.”
Edric answered something too quiet for me to hear.
Then Brenda said:
“If you touch those trust papers, I’ll tell them everything.”
I looked at Ramirez.
“That was the day.”
“What day?”
“The missing recording.”
Wells leaned forward.
“What do you think was on it?”
“I don’t know.”
That frightened me more than anything.
Because somebody had hidden a recording device inside our house before I ever started recording.
Somebody had preserved months of evidence.
May you like
And somebody had deleted exactly one file.
The file recorded less than a week before Edric brought us unconscious into the emergency room.
