Part 5
Travis Reed looked smaller in the interview room than he had in the hospital’s security footage. He was not small, exactly. He was forty-one, broad through the shoulders, with a day’s growth on his jaw and a fading bruise near one eye from whatever had happened during his arrest. But sitting under fluorescent lights with a public defender beside him and a detective across the table, he had lost the borrowed authority that frightened children obeyed.
Julian stood behind the one-way glass with Nora Bennett and Assistant District Attorney Miles Warren. He had asked to be in the room. Miles had said no. Nora had said absolutely not. The compromise was observation, with one brief recorded question allowed if the detective believed it useful.
Travis began with denial. He claimed the children wandered. He claimed Emily exaggerated. He claimed Lily always made up stories because she wanted attention.
Julian did not move until the detective slid three photographs across the table: Lily’s rope-burned waist, the broken dock planks, the place in the river where the raft had wedged against the fallen tree.
Travis stopped talking.
Detective Malloy leaned back. “A seven-year-old tied herself to three toddlers because you left them in a storm. You can keep pretending, or you can explain why.”
Travis looked at his lawyer. The lawyer gave him a weary nod.
“I didn’t mean for the water to get that high,” Travis muttered.
Behind the glass, Julian’s hand curled into a fist.
Detective Malloy’s voice stayed level. “Who paid you?”
Travis’s gaze flicked toward the mirror. He knew Julian was there. Men like Travis often knew exactly where power stood in a room.
“I want the deal first.”
Miles pressed the intercom. “Tell him cooperation is considered after a truthful statement, not before.”
The detective repeated it.
Travis laughed once, without humor. “You people don’t get it. She has reach. She said if I ever said her name, I’d disappear into charges I couldn’t fight.”
Nora looked at Julian. “She.”
“Keep listening,” Julian said.
The detective slid a bank record across the table. “Fifty thousand dollars landed in an account connected to you. Three weeks later, four children nearly died. That money already talks. You need to catch up.”
Travis rubbed both hands over his face. When he lowered them, his arrogance had thinned into fear.
“She never gave me a name,” he said. “Not a real one. The first time, she met me at a hotel bar downtown. Expensive coat. Blonde hair. Older. Not old, just… polished. Like she’d never carried her own groceries in her life.”
“What did she want?”
“Emily declared unfit. That was the phrase. Declared unfit.” Travis swallowed. “At first it was little stuff. Miss appointments. Make Emily look unstable. Get neighbors to complain. Leave the kids with me and then call in concerns. She wanted a file. Enough for the county to act.”
Julian felt Nora’s hand touch his sleeve, a warning to stay still.
“What was supposed to happen after the county acted?” Detective Malloy asked.
Travis hesitated.
“Say it,” the detective said.
“She said there were ways to get children placed with the right family if the mother lost rights. Private channels. Foster-to-adopt. She said the children deserved better than Emily.”
Julian heard his mother’s voice in that sentence so clearly that the glass between rooms seemed to vanish.
Detective Malloy placed another photograph on the table. It showed Lily in the ER, asleep beneath hospital blankets. “Did Lily deserve the river?”
Travis looked away. “That wasn’t the plan.”
“What was the plan?”
“I was supposed to scare them. Leave them where someone would find them, then say Emily lost track of them. But Lily took them the wrong direction. I tried to circle back, but there were police cars by then.”
“You called no one.”
“I panicked.”
Julian pressed the intercom button before anyone could stop him. “What charity?”
Travis looked up.
Nora muttered, “Julian.”
Miles did not cut the feed.
Julian leaned closer to the microphone. “She paid through a charity account. Which one?”
Travis stared at the mirror. His face shifted with recognition, and for once he seemed to understand that the man on the other side was not there to make a deal.
“Bright Harbor Children’s Trust,” he said.
Nora closed her eyes.
Bright Harbor was Eleanor Mercer’s proudest public achievement, a child welfare foundation with photographs of smiling foster families in every annual report. Julian had sat through fundraisers where his mother spoke about protecting children from chaos. He had donated quietly and avoided speeches because he hated the performance of goodness.
Now Bright Harbor’s name sat in the air like a stain.
Detective Malloy continued, drawing out dates, meeting places, descriptions, and payment details. Travis gave enough to bury himself and implicate someone with money, though he still claimed he had never heard her real name. Julian did not need the name. Not anymore.
He left before the interview ended.
“Julian,” Nora said, following him into the hallway. “Do not confront your mother alone.”
“I’m not going to hurt her.”
“That is not what I’m worried about.”
He stopped. “She gave away a daughter. Watched that daughter struggle. Then decided the solution was to steal her grandchildren through a man willing to abandon them.”
Nora’s expression changed. She knew about the adoption file; he had told her an hour earlier because Emily would need legal support when the truth came out.
“You don’t know yet that Eleanor ordered the river,” Nora said.
“No. I know she hired a loaded weapon and pointed it at a family.”
“That distinction may matter in court.”
“It doesn’t matter to Lily.”
Julian drove himself to Eleanor’s estate in the west hills, refusing both driver and security detail. The rain had stopped, leaving the streets glossy and gray. He passed houses with glass walls and gated drives, houses that did not hear sirens unless sirens came for someone else.
Eleanor Mercer’s home sat behind iron gates and sculpted hedges, more museum than house. A staff member opened the door and paled when she saw Julian’s face.
“She’s in the study,” the woman said without being asked.
Julian walked the familiar marble hall past oil paintings, fresh flowers, and the grand staircase he had been scolded for running down as a child. He remembered being eight years old and bleeding from one knee, standing silently while Eleanor told him not to embarrass himself in front of guests. He had mistaken that for strength for far too long.
The study door was half open.
Eleanor was not inside.
Her desk, however, was covered with preparation for the Bright Harbor gala: donor lists, seating charts, remarks printed on thick cream paper. Julian stepped closer. He saw Emily’s name nowhere, but he saw four ages circled on a placement spreadsheet. Seven. Two. Two. Two.
Beneath the seating chart, tucked under the edge of Eleanor’s calendar, sat a manila folder. Julian pulled it free. On the tab, in his mother’s clean handwriting, were four words. Hart children — placement options…
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