Margot stepped out of the SUV.
Silas handed her something small and rectangular.
Miller enlarged the frame.
It was a temporary license plate.
Then Silas walked around the SUV, wiped part of the rear window with his sleeve, and leaned through the driver’s side window to speak to her.
The camera had no sound, but their movements were clear.
He pointed toward the road.
Margot nodded.
She returned to the SUV and drove away in the direction the babysitter would soon travel.
Silas remained at the station for almost a minute before leaving in his own car.
“That footage is altered,” he said.
No one answered him.
His aunt, who had spent the previous week telling relatives I was too unstable to attend the funeral, lowered her eyes.
His older brother moved away from him.
Margot’s breathing became loud enough to hear across the chapel.
“You said that camera was dead,” she whispered.
Silas turned toward her with such speed that two officers immediately stepped between them.
“Be quiet.”
“You said there was no footage.”
“I said be quiet.”
Detective Miller stopped the recording.
“Thank you, Ms.
Hunt,” he said.
“That statement has been witnessed by everyone in this room.”
Silas’s face tightened.
Margot covered her mouth, realizing too late what she had admitted.
Samantha opened a folder from the evidence box.
She did not hand it to me.
She gave it directly to Miller.
Inside were the insurance-policy amendments, the forged beneficiary forms, bank transfers, rental documents for the SUV, and copies of messages recovered through a warrant served that morning.
The financial trail began twelve days before the crash.
Silas had increased the twins’ policies from fifty thousand dollars to two million dollars each.
My signature had been copied from an old tax document and applied electronically through Margot’s tablet.
The premiums had been paid from a concealed account funded with money taken from our joint savings.
Two days later, Margot had rented the SUV using a false address but her real driver’s license.
Silas had purchased the temporary plate with cash.
The messages were worse.
They had not used the twins’ names.
They called them “the policies.”
Silas wrote that the road would be nearly empty during heavy rain.
Margot asked what would happen if the babysitter survived.
His reply was only four words.
“She won’t know enough.”
But she had survived.
The babysitter had spent seventeen days in a medically induced coma.
When she woke, she remembered the first impact.
She remembered seeing a woman behind the wheel of the SUV.
She remembered trying to pull Rose and her brother from the wreck before losing consciousness.
Miller had interviewed her the night before the funeral.
She identified Margot from a photographic lineup.
At that, Margot began to cry.
It was not the quiet grief I had carried since the hospital called me.
It was frantic, frightened crying from someone who had believed consequences belonged only to other people.
“He planned it,” she said.
“Silas planned everything.”
Silas lunged toward her.
