Chapter 7
The police arrested Carol that afternoon at her house.
She didn’t go quietly.
She screamed at the officers, called them liars, said I’d planted the medicine, that I’d paid off the lab, that Emma was a brainwashed little liar.
The local news covered the arrest.
Carol was led out of her house in handcuffs, her hair a mess, yelling at the cameras.
“Clara Carter is a monster!” she screamed. “She’s abusing those kids! She’s framing me to cover up her own crimes! You’ll see! The truth will come out!”
Ryan was arrested two days later at Lila’s apartment in Scottsdale.
He tried to run out the back door, but the officers were waiting for him.
He was booked into the county jail, no bail this time.
But the drama wasn’t over.
Carol’s lawyer bailed her out the next day, citing “health issues.”
She held a press conference on the steps of the courthouse, crying into a tissue, surrounded by her friends and family.
“I am a loving grandmother,” she said, her voice shaking. “I would never hurt my grandchildren. That woman has turned my own granddaughter against me. She has stolen my son from me. She has ruined my life. I will fight these charges until my last breath. And I will get my grandbabies back. They belong with family. Not with a violent, unstable woman who hits her husband and coaches her daughter to lie.”
The press ate it up.
The story went viral on Facebook.
Thousands of people commented on the news articles.
Most of them took Carol’s side.
How could a grandmother do that to her own grandkids?
Clara is clearly the abuser. Look how she hits her husband!
Poor Carol. This is a travesty of justice.
Those kids need to be with their grandma.
I got hundreds of hate messages on my social media accounts.
People called me a monster.
A liar.
A bad mother.
They said I deserved to have my kids taken away.
I deleted all my accounts.
I didn’t leave the hotel room except for doctor’s appointments and meetings with Mr. Henderson.
I was scared to go out.
Scared someone would recognize me.
Scared Carol’s friends would hurt me or the kids.
Mr. Henderson tried to reassure me.
“Most of those people don’t know the full story,” he said. “Once we present all the evidence at trial, they’ll see the truth. Ryan and Carol are going to prison for a long time. You and the kids will be able to move on with your lives.”
But Carol wasn’t going down without a fight.
Her lawyer filed a motion to dismiss all charges, claiming the evidence was obtained illegally— that we’d broken into the house to steal the second phone, that Emma’s statement was coerced, that the medicine bottle was planted.
The judge scheduled a preliminary hearing to decide if there was enough evidence to go to trial.
We had one week to prepare.
Then Mia came up with a plan.
“Carol thinks she’s smarter than everyone,” she said. “She thinks she can talk her way out of anything. What if we give her enough rope to hang herself?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We wear a wire,” she said. “You go visit her. You pretend you’re broken. You say you’re tired of fighting. You say you’ll give up custody of the kids, drop the charges, sign over the trust fund, if she just promises to leave you alone. She’ll brag. She’ll admit everything. And we’ll have it on tape.”
“It’s too dangerous,” Mr. Henderson said. “Ryan is out on bail too. If they find the wire, they could hurt her.”
“Then I’ll go with her,” Mia said. “I’ll wait in the car. If she’s not out in ten minutes, I’ll call the police. We’ll have officers parked down the street, ready to move in if anything goes wrong.”
I thought about it.
I thought about Emma’s scared face.
I thought about Lucas’s brain bleed.
I thought about all the lies Carol had told, all the pain she’d caused.
I nodded.
“I’ll do it.”
The next afternoon, I drove to Carol’s house.
I wore a small microphone hidden in my necklace.
Mia followed a block behind me.
Two plainclothes officers parked at the end of the street.
I knocked on Carol’s front door.
She opened it.
She was surprised to see me, but she smiled.
“Well, well,” she said. “Look who finally came to her senses. Come in.”
I walked into her living room.
It smelled like her lavender perfume, the smell I’d hated for years.
She sat down on the couch and patted the spot next to her.
“Have a seat,” she said. “I knew you’d come around. You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“I’m tired of fighting,” I said, letting my voice shake. “I can’t take it anymore. The hate messages. The court dates. The stress. I just want it to be over.”
“Of course you do,” Carol said, smiling. “It’s simple. You sign over full custody of the kids to me. You resign as trustee of the trust fund. You drop all the criminal charges. You move out of state, and you never contact any of us again. In return, I won’t press charges against you for hitting Ryan, or for breaking into our house to steal that phone. You get to start over. No jail. No more stress. It’s a good deal.”
“You really planned all of this, didn’t you?” I said. “From the beginning.”
Carol leaned back, smug.
“Of course I did,” she said. “You were never good enough for my son. You were too busy working, too busy being independent. You didn’t appreciate him. You didn’t appreciate me. That money was always meant to be Ryan’s. My husband worked hard for that money. It should go to his son, his grandchildren, not be controlled by some outsider who married into the family. I did what any good mother would do. I protected my son’s future.”
“You drugged my baby,” I said.
“Please,” she scoffed. “It was just a little Benadryl. He cried too much. It was for his own good. And Emma? She was a brat. She needed to learn respect. She’ll thank me one day, when she’s older and understands how much I sacrificed for her.”
“You told Ryan to throw Lucas on the floor,” I said.
“It worked, didn’t it?” she said, laughing. “You slapped him right on cue. The police were called. The neighbors saw. It was perfect. The only mistake was that little brat recording it. But I fixed that. I almost had the judge convinced she was lying. If you hadn’t run off with that stupid phone, I would have won.”
She stood up and walked over to the mantel, where there was a photo of Ryan and the kids.
“Once you sign those papers,” she said, “Ryan and Lila will get married. They’ll raise the kids properly. The money will be used for what it’s meant for. And you? You’ll be gone. Forgotten. Just like you deserve.”
Then the front door opened.
Ryan walked in.
He stopped when he saw me.
His face turned red with rage.
“What is she doing here?” he yelled at Carol.
Then he saw the necklace.
He saw the small microphone peeking out from under my shirt.
His eyes went wide.
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“She’s wearing a wire!” he screamed.
He lunged at me.
