3: 3
3
My head snapped up.
"What do you mean?"
"We have to confirm your relationship to every one of the victims."
"After the deaths, we ran an expedited kinship test."
He slid a report across the table toward me.
The results confirmed it: Nina was indeed the biological daughter of my husband and me.
I stared at that piece of paper, my fingers shaking so badly I could barely hold the report.
"Of course she's my daughter."
"I carried her for ten months. I nearly lost my life bringing her into the world."
Nina had weighed barely five pounds when she was born.
When the nurse laid her against me, she couldn't even open her eyes, but her tiny hand still curled instinctively around my finger.
The year she turned three, she started preschool for the first time.
She stood behind the railing crying for her mama, and I hid behind the wall and cried with her the whole morning.
When she ran a fever, she'd only sleep curled against my chest.
Even when my arm went numb and lost all feeling, I didn't dare shift her.
Just last night, she'd held up her crayons and asked me,
"Mama, when the yellow dress comes, will you put it on so I can see?"
"You'll look just like a princess in yellow."
But now that dress was clutched in her arms.
And she would never open her eyes to look at me again.
I lifted my head toward the detective across from me and asked, almost in a whisper,
"Do you have a child?"
He was quiet for a moment, then nodded.
"Yes."
"How old?"
"Six."
"Then could you bring yourself to kill him?"
The detective didn't answer.
The tears kept falling.
"You know how small a child looks when they're asleep."
"When she's got her arms around you calling you Mommy and Daddy, you can't even bear to raise your voice."
"How could I poison my own daughter with my own hands?"
"Even if my husband and his parents treated me badly, even if I hated them, I could have divorced him. I could have taken my daughter and gone home to my parents."
"Why would I kill the parents who loved me most and my own daughter along with them?"
The younger officer had stopped looking at me.
The interrogation room stayed silent for a long time.
At last the detective across from me spoke.
"Feelings can't be evidence."
"But we'll keep verifying what you've told us."
Just then the door of the interrogation room was pushed open.
An officer walked in carrying the kids' smartwatch and a recovered recording.
"This was found on one of the victims."
"Right before the deaths, the watch automatically recorded something."
The recording played. It was Nina's voice.
"Mama, this white powder, can I really put it in the fruit tea?"
A few seconds later, a woman answered,
"Yes."
"Good girl. Pour a little into every cup."
"Once they've all finished drinking, Mama will take you out to play."
My whole body went rigid.
The woman in the recording.
The voice was exactly, identically mine.
