Emma told me Caleb had taken her keys before, and this time she remembered exactly where he put them.
Not in his pocket.
He slid them across the dining table to my mother.
That changed what I was looking at.
This wasn’t one person losing control while everyone else froze. Emma had tried to leave, and someone had taken away the thing she needed to do it.
I called a locksmith from the hospital hallway and asked him to replace every exterior lock before we came home.
Then Emma gave me permission to save copies of the photographs and the messages she still had.
My mother called twice while I was doing it.
I didn’t answer.
Caleb called next.
I didn’t answer him either.
Then a message appeared from my aunt Denise, one of the six people at dinner:
“Your mother says Emma fell. Please don’t make this worse.”
