Chapter 4 - What Madison Really Did
They brought Madison in for questioning the next morning.
I wasn’t there, but Ethan was. He sat in the observation room and watched through the glass while the detective questioned her.
According to Ethan, she cried the entire time — big, dramatic sobs that stopped the second the detective left the room to get water. She told them I had “tripped” after she “gently nudged” me. She said I was always jealous of her and had probably faked the pregnancy for attention.
When the detective showed her the medical report confirming I had been twelve weeks pregnant and that blunt force trauma caused the placental abruption, Madison’s face changed.
She stopped crying.
She looked the detective dead in the eye and said, “Well… maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Some babies just aren’t strong enough.”
Ethan told me later that he had to be physically held back by two officers.
That night, while I was still in the hospital, Madison’s mugshot appeared on the local news.
“Woman arrested for assault on pregnant sister resulting in miscarriage.”
The comments under the article were brutal.
People called her a monster. They called my parents enablers. They said things about Madison that even I hadn’t dared to think out loud.
My phone started blowing up with messages from relatives I hadn’t spoken to in years.
Some were supportive.
Most were asking me to “forgive Madison” because “family is everything.”
I turned my phone off.
Ethan sat beside my bed, scrolling through his own phone with a dark expression.
“They’re already trying to spin it,” he said. “Your mother posted on Facebook that you ‘fell’ and Madison is being ‘unfairly targeted.’”
I closed my eyes.
Of course she did.
Even after everything, they still couldn’t admit what Madison was.
Even after she killed my baby.
I placed a hand over my now-empty stomach and felt nothing but rage.
“They’re never going to change,” I whispered.
Ethan took my hand.
“Then we stop waiting for them to change,” he said. “And we make sure they can never hurt you again.”
I looked at him.
May you like
For the first time since I woke up in this hospital bed, I felt something other than grief.
I felt ready.
