Chapter 6 - The Missing Fourteen Minutes
Two days after the fall, I walked out of the hospital with instructions to rest, attend follow-up appointments, and return immediately if certain symptoms appeared.
The simple act of crossing the parking garage felt like an achievement.
My muscles protested every step, and I had to pause when dizziness made the concrete tilt beneath my feet.
June guided me into her car without a word about being strong.
My father followed us in another vehicle, and Marcus remained nearby because we still did not know how far Vanessa's actions might reach.
I went to June's apartment instead of the mansion.
She had cleared a bedroom, put a pitcher of water beside the bed, and placed my mother's favorite novel on the nightstand.
I asked why she still had it.
"Because you gave it to me when we were sixteen," she said.
"You wrote that stories could teach people how to survive endings."
I held the book against my chest and cried.
For most of the day I slept in short intervals, waking whenever I remembered the sensation of falling.
At dusk, Marcus arrived with an update from Detective Ortega.
Investigators had obtained an order for records from the outside security provider and were examining the disabled camera's activity.
A camera outage did not erase every trace of a system's operation.
The provider preserved administrative login times, network events, and some automatic diagnostics that could help reconstruct what happened.
The fourteen missing minutes began shortly before Vanessa confronted me and ended shortly after my father kicked open the balcony door.
The timing appeared too deliberate to ignore.
However, there was still no reliable video of the shove itself.
"Then she can say I imagined it," I whispered.
Marcus shook his head.
"She can say anything. The investigation doesn't end with one camera."
He explained that the mansion's exterior had several independent systems, including driveway cameras operated by a separate contractor.
One had a distant view of the upper balcony through the garden trees.
It could not show faces clearly, but it recorded movements and timestamps.
A guest's vehicle dash camera might also have captured a reflection of the terrace doors.
The detective was collecting original files rather than relying on recordings passed through private messaging apps.
That distinction mattered because digital evidence had to be authenticated.
My father had offered to buy new equipment for the police, an idea Ortega immediately rejected.
The investigators needed independence from the family's money.
I liked that answer even though the delays terrified me.
That night June brought me a bowl of soup and asked about Vanessa's cruelty before the fall.
I remembered a dinner at which Vanessa said my father was too generous to me, and I remembered another night when she told a visiting cousin that stepchildren were the largest threat to a marriage.
I had treated those comments as petty insults.
Now I saw them as attempts to make my presence seem dangerous.
"What if Dad had walked away before I surfaced?" I asked June.
She stared at me for a moment.
"He didn't."
"What if Marcus hadn't been there?"
"He was."
"What if I had hit the edge?"
June reached for my hand.
"Those are real fears. You don't have to solve them tonight."
Before sunrise I woke to the sound of rain tapping against June's window.
My body reacted before my mind recognized where I was, and I grabbed the blanket as though it could stop another fall.
June sat beside me until the shaking passed.
She did not demand that I describe the nightmare.
Instead, she asked me to name the objects I could see in her room and reminded me that I was standing on solid ground.
We counted the books on her shelf and the small plants along the windowsill.
The exercise did not make the memory disappear, but it helped the present return.
I told her I was ashamed of being afraid of an ordinary balcony.
She asked whether I would judge someone who survived a car crash for being frightened by traffic.
I said of course not.
"Then try giving yourself the same kindness," she answered.
At breakfast I called the hospital's follow-up line with a question about my lingering cough.
The nurse reviewed the warning signs and confirmed which symptoms should prompt urgent care.
I was beginning to accept that seeking help was practical rather than weak.
The next morning my father visited, carrying breakfast in paper bags rather than sending someone to serve it.
He looked uncomfortable in June's small kitchen.
I told him the apartment wasn't a punishment.
He said he understood and asked whether I wanted to discuss the case.
I said I wanted to discuss us.
"When I was little, you used to check beneath my bed for monsters," I reminded him.
He smiled sadly.
"You were afraid of the radiator knocking."
"I believed you could make anything safe."
His smile disappeared.
"I haven't done that for you in a long time."
For the first time, he listened without trying to explain his way out of that failure.
He told me how he had convinced himself that Vanessa's remarks were harmless because they never sounded cruel when repeated aloud.
He admitted he sometimes asked me to be patient because confronting his wife would require him to acknowledge his own bad judgment.
"I need you to stop trying to make me comfortable," I said.
"I need you to believe what happened."
"I do believe you," he answered.
"And I will act like it."
Later that afternoon Ortega called us both to the police station, where she played a short sequence recovered from the independent driveway camera.
The image was distant and partially obscured by tree branches.
It showed two figures moving on the upper balcony, followed by one figure suddenly disappearing from view.
An instant later, the pool erupted in a splash.
Seconds after that, a man ran from the terrace and jumped into the water.
The timing fit my account, but the camera angle could not establish every movement.
Ortega was careful about its limitations.
Then she displayed another piece of evidence.
The security provider had identified a device used to access the administrator account.
The tablet had been connected to the mansion network under Lydia Cross's assigned inventory number.
A record showed it had been in the upstairs corridor during the outage.
May you like
"We've found Lydia," Ortega said.
"She wants to speak, but she is asking whether she'll be safe if she tells us what happened."
