He lifted both hands like he was the calm one. Like I was the danger. “It isn’t what it looks like. She got soap in her eyes. I set the phone there because I was showing her a cartoon to keep her still.”
There was no cartoon on the screen.
There was a red recording bar. And when my thumb slipped against the glass, a line of saved files opened underneath it. Dates. More than one. More than five.
I called 911 before he could say another word.
The dispatcher kept telling me to breathe. Emma clung to my neck so tightly her wet hair stuck to my face. Downstairs, Travis started insisting this was a misunderstanding. Janine didn’t argue with him. She just stood there in the hallway like a locked gate.
The first officer arrived in under ten minutes. It felt like a year.
By then I had Emma in my bedroom, dressed in clean pajamas, sitting on the bed with Janine’s hoodie over her knees. She kept asking if she was bad. I answered the same way every time.
“No, baby. You did nothing wrong.”
The officer who came in first was a woman with a tired voice and a notepad already open. She asked where the phone was. My hand was shaking so badly I almost dropped it when I gave it to her.
She looked at the live screen. Then her face changed.
That was the moment I stopped worrying that I had imagined it.
A second officer took Travis downstairs. I could hear pieces of his voice through the vent. Too calm. Too practiced. He said I was emotional. He said I was trying to punish him over marriage problems. He said any videos on the phone were innocent family memories.
I wanted to run downstairs and rip the words out of his mouth.
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