Chapter 6 - Emily Told Us About the “Practice Questions”
I did not interrogate:
Emily.
That mattered.
Once adults realize a child may have information, the temptation is to ask:
everything.
That can harm:
the child
and:
the reliability of what follows.
Emily already had a therapist from the years after Sarah died.
We contacted:
Dr. Naomi Feldman.
She spoke with Emily privately over several sessions.
The first important disclosure was not about:
money.
It was about:
questions.
Vivian had been asking Emily to practice answering:
“school questions.”
Emily said there was a woman on a video call once.
Vivian told her:
“This lady helps kids who have trouble at home.”
Emily remembered:
no name.
She did remember what Vivian told her beforehand.
“If she asks whether you miss Mommy, tell her all the time.”
True.
Emily did miss:
Sarah.
“If she asks whether you get angry, say yes.”
Also true.
All children get:
angry.
Then:
“If she asks whether Daddy is too busy, say yes.”
That hurt.
Because sometimes:
I was.
The manipulation was clever because Vivian did not always tell Emily to:
lie.
She selected truths.
Removed:
context.
Dr. Feldman asked:
“What happened if you answered differently?”
Emily said:
“Vivian said I wasn’t taking it seriously.”
Then:
“She would start over.”
A seven-year-old rehearsing the correct version of:
her unhappiness.
That was disturbing enough.
Then Emily mentioned:
food.
Dr. Feldman asked:
“What happens when you don’t eat dinner?”
“Sometimes it goes away.”
“Does something else come later?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Emily hesitated.
Then:
“She said good kids don’t need choices.”
That still could resemble strict:
parenting.
Then Emily said:
“She kept the dog bowl in the cabinet for me.”
My stomach turned.
“What?”
Dr. Feldman later relayed the disclosure through appropriate channels.
Emily said she had seen Vivian place the old dog bowl in a lower mudroom cabinet about:
three weeks
before the gala.
Vivian told her:
“That’s where dinner goes if you keep acting like an animal.”
So the dog-bowl humiliation had not been invented in the moment.
It had been threatened:
earlier.
That connected to one mysterious line in Vivian’s incident spreadsheet:
Dog feeding issue — escalation useful?
We still did not know exactly what she meant.
Then Dr. Feldman asked Emily:
“Did Vivian ever explain why she wanted you to go to a different school?”
Emily nodded.
“What did she say?”
“She said Daddy and her could be happy again.”
I closed my eyes.
Then Emily added one more sentence.
“And she said if I went away, Daddy could finally make the house theirs.”
That was the first time the financial motive and the emotional motive came from the same:
source.
Not an accountant.
Not an investigator.
My daughter.
And the next question became much uglier:
Had Vivian been making Emily miserable specifically so sending her away would eventually look like:
May you like
my idea?
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