Chapter 4 - The Purple Notebook
I asked Lily not to go looking for anything.
I told her adults would handle the notebook and that her only job was to eat dinner and sleep safely.
When the call ended, Gabriel contacted Agent Ortiz.
Before anyone entered the Callahan house, investigators needed lawful access, and Gabriel needed to stop Eleanor from claiming I had planted evidence.
My father did not offer a shortcut.
He offered the detective handling my assault case the precise information needed to seek the appropriate court orders.
That distinction mattered to him more than speed.
By evening, officers had secured permission to collect items relevant to the reported attack and, through separate legal process, investigators began preserving financial evidence.
I learned details only as they became safe to share.
At 9:40, Ortiz phoned.
“The notebook isn't in the dollhouse.”
My heart dropped.
“But we found a torn purple cover inside the recycling bin.”
“What was written on it?”
“Your daughter's name and a series of dates.”
Lily's small handwriting had decorated the cover with stars.
Inside the bin, officers had recovered pages listing visitors to our house and the times they entered Andrew's locked office.
Some entries were drawings of cars.
Others were careful little observations: GRANDMA BROUGHT BLUE CASE; MR SLOANE CAME WHEN MOM WAS AT WORK.
My daughter had been keeping a secret detective's journal because her teacher encouraged her to record interesting things each day.
Andrew had turned her curiosity into a reason to frighten her.
I remembered finding Lily crying at breakfast one morning.
She said Daddy had told her that people who wrote down grown-up secrets could disappear.
I had confronted him.
He kissed her forehead and called it a silly joke.
Now I understood why she had stopped bringing her notebook to school.
Ortiz also told us that the study's computer was gone.
Andrew claimed it had been sold weeks earlier.
But an electrician had photographed the office three days ago while repairing a broken outlet.
The computer appeared in the background, powered on.
Gabriel called it a useful contradiction.
My father called it a reason to keep looking.
Near midnight, the detective investigating my fall brought another piece of news.
A neighbor's security camera had captured the sound of my scream and, seconds later, Andrew saying, “Don't call anyone yet.”
The video could not show the push itself, but it challenged the timeline in his statement.
“Will they arrest him?” I asked.
“That's a decision for the investigators and prosecutor,” Gabriel said.
I despised that every answer was careful.
I had spent six years living in a house where Andrew made decisions like verdicts.
Carefulness felt slow and humiliating until I realized it was also the one thing his money couldn't buy away.
The next morning, a nurse delivered a small envelope without a return address.
Inside was a single sheet torn from a purple notebook.
In Lily's handwriting were six words that left my hands shaking.
May you like
DADDY SAID MOMMY MUST NEVER FIND THE BASEMENT DOOR.
