“No,” I said slowly. “She’s at her school. It’s three in the morning. She’s bruised and bleeding. The police are there.”
A silence stretched across the line.
“I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding,” he said.
“She wrote that you hurt her,” I said.
Another pause.
“That’s a conversation you should have with your wife,” he replied coolly. “I’m not involved in your parenting decisions.”
Then he hung up.
I called my sister Laura, a family lawyer who lived twenty minutes from the school.
“I’m going to get her,” she said immediately.
“The police are there,” I warned.
“She’s my niece,” Laura replied sharply. “I know how to handle this.”
The earliest flight home didn’t leave for hours.
I spent that time staring at the hotel carpet, my phone in my hand, calling Amanda again and again.
Nothing.
Finally, at 3:30 a.m., Laura called.
“I have Lily,” she said quietly.
My chest tightened.
“The police documented everything,” she continued. “Bruises on her arms, legs, and back. There’s a clear handprint on her shoulder.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“She still won’t talk,” Laura added. “But she wrote another note.”
“What did it say?”
“‘Grandpa gets angry when I cry. He locked me in the cold room.’”
The cold room.