Chapter 3 - The Accident They Had Built Around Her
Paige arrived forty minutes later.
Frank stood in the driveway with his arms folded while Erin carried one duffel bag from the house.
“She isn’t medically safe to leave,” he said.
Paige opened the passenger door of her Subaru.
“She’s an adult.”
“She has a brain injury.”
“And she says she doesn’t feel safe here.”
Linda remained behind the screen door.
Erin waited for her mother to say something.
Linda lowered her eyes.
That silence made leaving easier.
Paige lived in a two-bedroom apartment near Worthington. She gave Erin the guest room, placed a chair in the shower, and wrote the Wi-Fi password in letters large enough for Erin’s blurred vision.
The next morning, they requested Erin’s ambulance and emergency-room records.
The EMS report listed the call time as 10:48 p.m.
Erin’s smartwatch account showed her heart rate had spiked violently at 10:03, then dropped while she remained motionless on the garage floor.
Forty-five minutes had passed.
The paramedics recorded Linda’s explanation:
Patient fell approximately eight feet from folding ladder while retrieving storage containers.
Paige read the line twice.
“Your garage doesn’t have overhead storage.”
“It has shelves along one wall. Nothing eight feet high.”
The report also noted that Erin’s clothing was damp and partially changed before paramedics arrived. Linda had said she spilled water while trying to wake her.
Erin remembered Linda’s hands near the buttons of her blouse.
Not helping her.
Searching her.
Her employer, a speech-therapy clinic in Dublin, had already placed her on extended medical leave. Frank had told Erin’s supervisor that she might have mixed medication with alcohol.
Erin did not drink that night.
She had been driving home from a school consultation when she saw Frank’s truck outside the Brookstone Motor Lodge near I-270.
She remembered parking two rows away.
She remembered seeing him enter Room 114 with Rebecca Shaw, the office manager from Walsh Heating and Cooling.
She remembered lifting her phone.
The rest came in flashes.
A video.
A text sent to Linda.
Her mother replying almost immediately.
Come home. Don’t send that to anyone.
May you like
Erin had obeyed.
Now she understood that the first person she trusted with the truth had delivered her directly to Frank.
