The notebook held a list of people Gregory believed had wronged him. Rachel’s name was at the top. Investigators later linked him to her death and to another case that had been closed years earlier. Both cases were reopened.
Near the end of the notebook was a page about my family. I won’t repeat what it said. I’ll only say that it made one thing clear: Mia was never really the point. I was. He wanted to hurt me in the deepest way he could imagine, and he was willing to use a little girl to do it.
When Clara read the report, she put her hand over her mouth and cried. I held her and kept thinking that this wasn’t an old grudge anymore. This was a man who saw people as pieces in a game only he was playing.
There was one more piece of evidence, and it was the hardest to hear.
Detectives recovered a phone call Gregory made to Owen just hours after Mia was admitted to the hospital.
On the recording, Gregory sounded calm and convincing. “Mr. Alvarez is trying to tear our family apart, buddy. Some people only learn when they lose something they love.”
Owen was crying. “Dad, you’re scaring me.”
There was a long silence. Then Gregory said, “Someday you’ll understand. Promise me you won’t let him get away with it.”
And Owen, seven years old, scared, and desperate to please his father, answered in a tiny voice: “I promise, Daddy.”
I had to leave the room after hearing that. A seven-year-old shouldn’t have to make that kind of promise.
The trial was four months away, and those months were hard.
Mia started seeing a trauma therapist every week. She couldn’t sleep with her door closed. She panicked if someone poured her a drink from a container she didn’t recognize. Every night, she asked whether Mr. Hale could get through the windows.
One evening, as I tucked her in, she looked up at me with serious eyes.
