It was subtle, but I saw it.
Margaret did too.
“Emily,” Ethan warned.
The nurse stepped closer to the bed.
Emily swallowed.
“At dinner, I told Ethan I couldn’t do this anymore.
I said I was going home with my things and I would speak to a lawyer tomorrow.”
“She was hysterical,” Margaret said immediately.
Emily flinched at her voice.
I kept my eyes on my daughter.
“Then what happened?”
“Ethan took my keys.”
Ethan shook his head.
“For her own safety.”
“Then Brandon took my phone.”
Brandon straightened.
“You threw it.”
Emily finally looked directly at him.
“No.
You took it out of my hand.”
The room went still again.
Emily continued in pieces.
When she tried to walk out, Ethan blocked the door.
Margaret told her she was embarrassing the family.
Brandon grabbed her arms when she tried to get around him.
The bruises under the hospital lights needed no explanation.
Emily said she screamed.
No one came.
The dinner had been held at the Prescott family home, away from the city noise, with most of the household staff already gone for the evening.
Margaret told her that if she stopped fighting, they could all discuss the situation calmly.
Instead, they took her to the detached guest house.
They locked the door.
“I kept telling Ethan to let me leave,” Emily said.
“He stood outside and said I would thank him in the morning.”
Ethan looked at me as if reasonable adults should understand his decision.
“She was upset.
I was trying to keep her from doing something irrational.”
“You locked her in a building,” I said.
“For a few minutes.”
Emily’s head snapped up.
“It was almost two hours.”
Margaret sighed.
“This is becoming absurd.”
I took out my phone again.
“Then let’s stop arguing about memory.”
Margaret’s gaze dropped to the screen.
That was when two uniformed officers appeared in the hallway with a hospital security supervisor behind them.
Brandon muttered something under his breath.
Ethan looked furious.
Margaret simply straightened her shoulders.
“Good,” she said.
“Perhaps now someone sensible can end this circus.”
One officer entered while the other remained at the door.
He spoke first to the nurse, then to Emily.
“Ma’am, would you like these people to leave the room?”
Emily stared at him as though no one had asked her what she wanted all night.
