Chapter 3 - Lila Had Been Keeping a Record
The pink notebook had been a gift from Mateo two months earlier.
Lila called it her “important book.”
Most pages were ordinary four-year-old chaos.
Stick figures.
Suns.
Dogs with six legs.
Names written backward.
But the last seventeen pages were different.
Dates had been added at the top.
Not by Lila.
By someone helping her practice numbers.
Camille.
Mateo remembered.
Every night before bed, Camille asked Lila to write the date as handwriting practice.
That detail made the notebook unexpectedly useful.
On one page, Lila had drawn herself sitting on the nursery rug.
Beside her was a blue object.
Above it she wrote:
SHE PUT IT IN MY ROOM.
Another drawing showed Camille holding what looked like Noah’s rattle.
Arrow.
Lila’s coat.
Another:
Camille beside Lila’s bed.
A long object under the pillow.
The pacifier clip.
The spelling was imperfect.
The sequence was not.
Mateo crouched beside her.
“When did you start drawing these?”
Lila shrugged.
“When she said I forget.”
Mateo looked up sharply.
“Who said you forget?”
Lila pointed toward Camille.
Camille flinched.
Lila continued.
“She said sometimes I take baby stuff and then I forget.”
Mateo’s stomach turned.
“Did you?”
Lila shook her head violently.
“No.”
“Did she tell you that you did?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Lots.”
Mateo fought to keep his voice steady.
Children can be suggestible.
He knew that.
He did not want to replace one assumption with another.
So he stopped asking leading questions.
“Tell me about the pictures.”
Lila pointed.
“That one is when she put the blue thing in my coat.”
“What happened next?”
“She called you.”
Mateo remembered.
Camille had called him from the nursery while he was downstairs.
She sounded concerned.
“Mateo, I think we need to talk about Lila.”
When he came upstairs, the rattle was already inside Lila’s jacket.
Lila cried.
Camille comforted her.
That memory now felt grotesque.
Another page showed Noah’s sock.
Another showed the missing pacifier.
Every staged discovery appeared in Lila’s drawings.
But one page was different.
No nursery item.
Just Camille kneeling in front of Lila.
A speech bubble with uneven letters:
IF YOU TELL DAD HE WILL SEND NOAH AWAY.
Mateo stared.
“That’s not what you said tonight.”
Lila corrected him.
“She changed it.”
“What did she say tonight?”
Lila looked toward Camille.
Then pressed herself closer to Mateo.
“She said if I told about the bag, she’d take Noah away.”
Camille suddenly spoke.
“That is not what I meant.”
Mateo turned.
Finally.
“What did you mean?”
Camille’s hands trembled.
“I told her that if people thought this house wasn’t safe for Noah, things could change.”
Mateo stared at her.
“You said that to a four-year-old?”
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
Camille’s face collapsed slightly.
But still she did not answer.
Mateo looked back at the notebook.
May you like
The bag under the crib explained the missing items.
It did not explain why his wife had spent weeks convincing a child that she was responsible for making them disappear.
