Chapter 4 - The Broken Phone and the Unseen Video
When I pulled up to our house at 9:30 PM, the yard was completely dark. The lavender streamers I had lovingly hung that morning were now torn and flapping pathetically in the night wind. The backyard table still held the melted remnants of the birthday cake, sitting like a grotesque wax monument in the dark.
As I opened the front door, I saw lights on in the kitchen.
My stomach dropped.
Sitting at my kitchen island were my parents and Natalie. They were drinking my wine, talking in hushed, urgent tones. On the counter in front of my mother lay her rose-gold smartphone, its screen shattered into a spiderweb of cracked glass.
I slammed the front door shut behind me. All three of them jumped.
"Claire!" my mother exclaimed, clutching her chest. "My God, you scared us! How is Lily? Why aren't you at the hospital?"
"She's bandaged from her neck to her chest," I said, stepping into the bright kitchen light. "She has second-degree chemical burns. The doctors said she might need skin grafts."
My mother flinched slightly, looking away. "Oh... poor little thing."
"Are you happy now, Natalie?" I asked, looking directly at my sister.
Natalie slammed her wine glass down onto the quartz counter. "Don't start this again, Claire! We came back here to help clean up your yard because you vanished! We’ve been worried sick, and all you do is attack me!"
"You didn't come back to clean up," I said, eyeing the phone sitting on the counter. "You came back for that."
Natalie’s eyes flicked to the cracked phone for a fraction of a second, a subtle giveaway that didn't escape my notice.
"Mom dropped her phone when you brutally shoved her," Natalie said smoothly, crossing her arms. "The screen is completely smashed. It won't even turn on."
"Give it to me," I demanded, holding out my hand to my mother.
"Why?" Mom asked nervously, pulling the phone closer to her elbow. "It's broken, Claire."
"Because it has the video of the cake on it," I said, taking two steps toward her. "The video you were taking right before Lily was burned."
"Claire, stop this madness!" Dad barked, standing up from his chair. "You are acting like a lunatic! Your sister and mother have done nothing but support you, and you're trying to launch a witch hunt against your own niece! Chloe is a sweet little girl! She would never hurt anyone!"
"If the video shows it was an accident, then you have nothing to hide," I replied coldly, ignoring my father entirely. "Give me the phone, Mom."
"No!" Natalie interjected, reaching out and grabbing the phone off the counter before I could reach it. "You're unstable right now, Claire! You're going to destroy Mom's phone or use some distorted angle to ruin Chloe's life! I won't let you terrorize this family!"
Natalie stuffed the phone deep into her designer handbag and zipped it shut.
"Get out of my house," I said, my voice dropping to a icy register that made my father step back. "All three of you. Get out of my house right now before I call the police and have you removed for trespassing."
"Claire, you're making a terrible mistake—" my mother began to cry.
"OUT!" I roared, the rage exploding out of my chest with such force that the wine glasses on the counter rattled.
My father grabbed my mother's arm, glaring at me with deep disappointment. "You've lost your mind, Claire. Don't bother calling us when you realize how cruel you're being."
Natalie held her purse tightly against her side, giving me a smug, victorious look as she strutted past me toward the front door. "Get some rest, sister. You clearly need professional help."
They walked out, slamming the door behind them.
I stood in the silent, empty house, shaking with fury. They thought they had won. They thought that by hiding the broken phone, they had erased the evidence.
They didn't know that my husband Matthew was a software engineer who specialized in cloud data retrieval.
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My mother’s phone was connected to our home Wi-Fi network while she was at the party. And every video recorded on her device automatically backed up to her shared family cloud account—an account I had set up for her two years ago and still had the master login credentials for.
I sat down at my computer, opened the cloud portal, and clicked Sync.
