Chapter 5 - WHAT MARK BELIEVED ABOUT HIS OWN SON
Luis confirmed the invoice without hesitation.
Reena had called him.
She said Lily sleepwalked and she needed to keep the children from wandering upstairs at night.
Luis had disliked the idea of an outside bolt on a room children used, but Reena told him it was only temporary.
He installed it.
He regretted it now.
The lock proved Reena had lied about one thing.
It did not explain everything.
That came from Drew’s school records.
Peter did not receive them directly. CPS and investigators did.
Tasha later asked him questions based on what the school had documented.
Had Drew ever been violent toward Lily?
No.
Had Mark ever told Peter that Drew hurt animals?
Never.
Had Drew ever started fires?
Peter stared at her.
“Absolutely not.”
Tasha nodded.
“Those behaviors were reported to the school last year.”
“By who?”
She did not answer immediately.
She did not have to.
Reena.
The reports had begun months before Peter and Mark stopped speaking.
Mark had attended two school meetings worried that Drew’s behavior was becoming dangerous.
Teachers had seen none of it.
At school, Drew was quiet, protective of Lily during family events, and unusually anxious about getting in trouble.
But Mark had believed the reports happening at home.
Peter remembered their last real argument.
Mark had said, “You don’t see what he’s like when nobody else is around.”
At the time Peter thought Mark was becoming harsher under Reena’s influence.
Now the sentence sounded different.
Mark had believed he was protecting Lily from Drew.
Reena had made a grieving father suspicious of his own six-year-old son.
Peter sat in Tasha’s office with both palms pressed together.
“Why?”
“We’re still establishing motive.”
Peter knew one possible answer.
Before Reena, Mark’s world had revolved around his children.
After their first wife, Hannah, died from complications after Lily’s birth, Mark had become terrified of failing them.
Reena had entered that fear and made herself indispensable.
She managed appointments.
School emails.
Bills.
Discipline.
Eventually, even Mark’s relationship with Peter.
Tasha closed the folder.
“There’s something else.”
Peter looked up.
“Drew’s counselor documented that he once asked whether bad kids had to live downstairs.”
“When?”
“Before your brother died.”
Peter’s stomach dropped.
“So Mark knew about the room.”
“Not necessarily.”
Peter stared at her.
Tasha tapped one line in her notes.
“Because when the counselor asked Drew who told him that, he said, ‘Reena says Dad will make me live there if I don’t stop lying.’”
The punishment room had existed first as a threat.
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The lock came later.
And Mark had been persuaded to believe the child who needed protection was the dangerous one.
