I did not show Daniel immediately.
That was irrational.
We had spent days telling each other everything, especially the things that frightened us. Yet I sat on the edge of the bed with the phone in my hand and felt an old instinct return.
Handle it first.
Understand it first.
Then decide whether it deserved to become a problem.
That instinct belonged to the family I was trying to escape.
So I walked into the bathroom, where Daniel was brushing his teeth, and handed him the phone.
He read the message.
Then he read it again.
"Who sent this?"
"I don't know."
"Call them."
"No."
He looked at me in the mirror.
"Why not?"
"Because the prosecutor told us to preserve everything and not interfere."
He rinsed his mouth.
"That's annoyingly reasonable."
"I hate it."
"I know."
I forwarded the message to Elena Ruiz that night.
She replied the next morning asking me not to respond to the sender.
Investigators would trace the number if possible.
Then she asked a question I did not expect.
Had I ever been inside my parents' garage recently enough to know whether the photograph was current?
I called her.
"The garage hasn't changed in fifteen years."
"That isn't what I asked."
"No. I haven't been in there recently."
"What do you recognize?"
"The shelving. Dad's red toolbox. The freezer. That's their garage."
"And the pesticide?"
"I've seen containers like that."
"How often?"
I tried to remember.
Dad had always kept garden chemicals on a high metal shelf against the back wall. Weed killer. Ant poison. Fertilizer. Mouse bait one winter.
"I don't know."
"Do you recognize the exact product?"
"Only because of the investigation."
Elena paused.
"One detail matters. The photographed container appears to have been opened before the date of Lily's exposure."
"How can you tell?"
"The seal is broken."
My stomach tightened.
"Maybe Dad used it."
"That's possible."
"What does Natalie say?"
"She initially told police she opened the container that morning."
I closed my eyes.
Another lie.
Not necessarily a large one.
Not necessarily important.
But after everything, small lies no longer stayed small.
"What happens now?"
"Nothing you need to do."
That answer lasted three hours.
At eleven in the morning, Elena called back.
"Jenna, we identified the number."
I moved away from Lily's play mat.
"Who is it?"
"Someone named Mark Ellison."
The name meant nothing.
"Should I know him?"
"He says he worked with your father."
"Where?"
"At North Ridge Hardware."
I knew the place. Dad had worked there part-time after retiring from his insurance job, mostly because he hated being home all day.
"Why would he have a picture of my parents' garage?"
"He says your father sent it to him."
I sat down.
"When?"
"About two weeks before the incident."
"Why?"
"According to Mr. Ellison, they were discussing pest control."
That sounded almost disappointingly normal.
Then Elena continued.
"Mr. Ellison says your father asked whether that specific pesticide was strong enough to kill mice."
I stared at the floor.
"So?"
"Nothing by itself. But Mr. Ellison also says your father complained that the container had already been opened even though he had just bought it."
The room went quiet around me.
"How long before Lily got sick?"
"Approximately nine days."
Nine days.
Natalie had sent my mother a photograph of the pesticide two days before the incident.
But the container had apparently been opened a week earlier.
"Did Natalie have access to the garage?"
"Yes."
"Did she live there?"
"No."
Natalie had her own apartment twenty minutes away.
But she visited constantly.
More than I did.
"Why did Mark send me the picture?"
"He saw a local report about the case. The description of the product sounded familiar."
I rubbed my forehead.
"Does Dad know he contacted you?"
"We haven't discussed that with him."
"Good."
"Jenna, don't draw conclusions yet."
I almost laughed.
"That's becoming everybody's favorite sentence."
"For a reason."
She was right.
I hated that too.
The next two days passed without visible change.
Lily had her first follow-up appointment.
Her pediatrician listened to her lungs for so long that my palms began sweating.
Finally she straightened.
"Clear."
"Completely?"
"Today, yes."
"Could something still happen?"
"We'll monitor her."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you don't have to interpret every breath as an emergency."
I looked away.
The doctor softened.
"But I understand why you are."
On the drive home, I cried quietly while Daniel drove.
Not because Lily was sick.
Because she wasn't.
Relief had become painful.
That evening Elena called again.
This time her voice was different.
"We need to ask you about Natalie's past."
"What kind of past?"
"Any incidents involving tampering, poisoning, making someone sick, or practical jokes involving food or household products."
I sat at the kitchen table.
Daniel was across the room warming a bottle.
"No."
"Think carefully."
"She played pranks."
"What kind?"
"Normal stupid things."
"Examples?"
I searched my memory.
Natalie switching sugar for salt when we were teenagers.
Putting hot sauce in Dad's ketchup.
Hiding Mom's car keys.
Once she put fake insects in my bed.
Nothing like Lily.
Nothing remotely like Lily.
Then a memory surfaced.
I had almost forgotten it.
"Natalie made Dad sick once."
Daniel stopped moving.
Elena asked, "Tell me."
"We were teenagers."
"How old?"
"I was maybe seventeen. Natalie was fourteen."
"What happened?"
"Dad kept stealing bites from food when Mom cooked."
I could see the kitchen.
The old yellow wallpaper.
Mom yelling at Dad to stop eating from the pot.
Natalie laughing.
"She put something in a spoonful of stew."
"What?"
"Ipecac."
There was silence on the line.
Daniel stared at me.
"Jenna, are you sure?"
"Yes."
I had not heard the word in years.
Ipecac syrup had once been kept in medicine cabinets for poisoning emergencies before recommendations changed.
Mom had bought a bottle years earlier.
Natalie poured some into food.
Dad ate it.
He vomited for hours.
"What happened afterward?"
"Mom screamed at her."
"Police?"
"No."
"Doctor?"
"No. Dad was fine later."
"Consequences?"
I almost said yes.
Then I remembered accurately.
Dad had threatened punishment.
Natalie cried.
Mom insisted she had learned her lesson.
By the next day, everyone was joking about it.
"It became a family story."
Elena said nothing.
I felt suddenly ashamed.
Not because I had done anything.
Because I had once laughed when the story was told.
"Was there anything else?"
I forced myself to think.
One Halloween Natalie had replaced candy filling with toothpaste.
In college she put laxative chocolate into her roommate's snack drawer after an argument.
I had heard about that one secondhand.
"Wait."
I sat straighter.
"What?"
"The roommate."
"What happened?"
"Natalie said her roommate stole food, so she bought some kind of chocolate laxative and left it in her own drawer."
"Did the roommate eat it?"
"Yes."
"Was she hospitalized?"
"I don't think so."
"Do you know her name?"
I did.
Erica Nolan.
I had met her twice.
Elena wrote it down.
"Anything else?"
My mind had become a hallway with doors opening one after another.
Things that once seemed unrelated suddenly stood beside each other.
Natalie adding alcohol to Grandma's punch after Grandma refused to drink.
Natalie putting hair dye into shampoo at a friend's house, though she always claimed someone else had done it.
Natalie slipping something bitter into my coffee after I criticized one of her boyfriends.
Every event had been minimized because the result had not been catastrophic.
Until now.
"I don't know how much is real," I said.
"That's okay."
"I don't want to exaggerate."
"Then don't. Give us names and memories. We'll verify."
After we ended the call, Daniel set the bottle down.
"How did nobody see this?"
I looked at him.
"We saw it."
"What?"
"We saw all of it."
I thought about my parents laughing over the ipecac incident years later.
About relatives calling Natalie "our little menace."
About every boundary violation becoming personality.
"We just called it something else."
Daniel sat across from me.
"That changes now."
Two days later, an investigator contacted Erica Nolan.
She remembered the laxative incident.
More importantly, she still had something.
A voicemail.
Natalie had left it after Erica confronted her.
Elena allowed us to hear a copy.
Natalie's voice was younger, faster, irritated.
If you stop taking my things, I won't have to teach you lessons.
The same word.
Lessons.
I felt cold.
Then came another development.
Police obtained footage from a camera mounted on the house across from my parents.
The camera's angle captured part of their driveway and garage entrance.
Nine days before Lily's poisoning—the same day Dad had apparently complained about the broken pesticide seal—Natalie arrived at my parents' home while they were out.
She stayed eleven minutes.
She left carrying nothing visible.
Three days later, she returned.
That visit lasted four minutes.
Elena told us investigators had searched Natalie's apartment under a warrant.
They found an empty plastic bag with traces of the same pesticide.
They also found latex gloves.
That meant the contamination might not have been decided in my nursery.
She may have prepared for it.
The next question became worse.
Why bring flour at all?
Why tell Mom the prank was harmless?
Why hide pesticide beforehand?
The answer seemed obvious.
Because Natalie wanted an audience that believed she was doing something else.
My mother included.
It did not absolve her.
But it changed the shape of her guilt.
That evening I sat on the nursery floor while Lily rolled from her back to her side and became furious when she could not complete the turn.
I helped her gently.
She grunted.
Then smiled.
Such an ordinary achievement.
Such an impossible gift.
My phone rang.
Elena.
I answered.
"We've located another person from Natalie's past."
"Who?"
"A former boyfriend."
I vaguely remembered several.
"This one is named Kyle Mercer."
The name came back slowly.
They had dated when Natalie was twenty-three.
The relationship ended badly.
"What did she do to him?"
Elena paused.
"That's what we're trying to determine."
"Why?"
"Because he says he became violently ill twice during their relationship."
I closed my eyes.
"He thinks Natalie did it?"
"He didn't then."
"And now?"
"Now he isn't sure."
Lily slapped one palm against the rug.
I watched her.
"What did he get sick from?"
"Both times, he thought it was food poisoning."
My heart began beating faster.
"Was it?"
"Hospital records from the second incident may still exist."
"Why are you telling me this now?"
"Because there is one more thing."
I waited.
"When Kyle ended the relationship, Natalie sent him a message."
"What did it say?"
Elena read from her notes.
"She told him someday he would learn not to make her feel small."
I did not speak.
The word lesson was gone.
The idea was the same.
And for the first time, I wondered whether Lily had ever truly been the target.
Maybe the pesticide had never been about the baby at all.
Maybe Lily had simply been the thing Natalie knew could hurt me most.
Click Here to continue read next: PART7: Natalie’s Former Boyfriend Remembered Two Mysterious Illnesses, but His Hospital Records Revealed a Pattern No One Had Ever Connected Before
The Afternoon My Sister Reached for the Baby Powder and Turned an Ordinary Nursery Into a Crime Scene
Part 6 of 16
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