Chapter 20 - The Missing Notebook
I screamed for David.
He was upstairs within seconds.
The empty safe sat open in front of me.
“Where’s the notebook?”
“Gone.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
David checked the window.
Locked.
Then the bedroom door.
No damage.
“Who knows the safe code?”
“You and me.”
“My parents knew the old one.”
“We changed it last year.”
He stared at the keypad.
“This wasn’t forced.”
My skin crawled.
Lily appeared in the hallway.
“What happened?”
I turned too quickly.
“Nothing.”
Her eyes went immediately to the safe.
“Mom.”
I hated how observant she was.
“The notebook is missing.”
Her face drained.
“What?”
“We’re going to find it.”
She ran toward the closet.
“It was right there.”
“I know.”
“Who took it?”
“We don’t know.”
David called the police.
Then Olivia.
Then my parents.
My mother began crying when she realized someone might have entered our home.
The responding officer found no obvious sign of forced entry.
Our security camera showed no stranger approaching the front door.
The backyard camera had gone offline for nineteen minutes during the previous afternoon because of a router update.
That was the only gap.
Lily sat on the stairs hugging her knees.
“That notebook was evidence.”
“We have witness statements,” I reminded her.
“But my timestamps.”
“We’ll handle it.”
Then she whispered, “I wrote other things in there too.”
I sat beside her.
“What things?”
“About Dad.”
David paused in the hallway.
Lily looked embarrassed.
“I wrote when I missed him.”
David’s expression softened.
“And I wrote about Noah crying all night.”
“That’s okay.”
“And Mom crying in the laundry room when she thought nobody knew.”
My breath caught.
She looked at me.
“I wasn’t spying.”
“I know.”
“It was my journal too.”
Now I understood.
Someone had not only taken evidence.
They had taken something deeply personal from my daughter.
Olivia arrived that afternoon.
“First question: Are we certain it was stolen?”
“Yes.”
“Could anyone have moved it?”
“No.”
“Second question: Did Amanda’s lawyers know where the notebook was kept?”
“No.”
“Did they know you had the original?”
“Yes.”
Olivia sighed.
“That is not proof they had anything to do with this.”
Lily looked angry.
“Who else would want it?”
“We do not accuse people without evidence.”
That sounded exactly like something Lily’s teacher would say.
She hated it.
But she nodded.
Police dusted the safe.
Only family fingerprints appeared.
They interviewed neighbors.
Nothing.
By evening, the missing notebook dominated local news because someone leaked the police report.
Amanda’s attorney immediately released a statement.
“Ms. Sterling categorically denies any knowledge regarding the alleged disappearance of the child’s notebook. We question why crucial evidence conveniently vanished immediately before forensic examination.”
I nearly threw my phone across the room.
“She’s suggesting we destroyed it.”
Olivia nodded grimly.
“That was always the risk.”
Lily stood.
“I can prove I wrote it.”
“How?”
“Dad.”
David looked confused.
“What?”
“Before we landed.”
She ran upstairs.
Thirty seconds later she returned holding her tablet.
“My school account.”
She opened an app used for class assignments.
Then a folder titled STORY IDEAS.
Inside were photographs.
Dozens.
Every page of the notebook.
I stared.
“When did you do this?”
“On the plane.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to show Dad what happened.”
David covered his mouth.
She had photographed every page while sitting in first class.
The images automatically uploaded to cloud storage with timestamps.
Each photograph contained metadata.
Time.
Date.
Device.
And because the plane still had inflight Wi-Fi, the uploads had begun before landing.
Olivia’s eyes widened.
“Lily, do you understand what you just did?”
“Backed up my homework?”
“You created independently timestamped copies of every page before the lawsuit existed.”
Lily looked uncertain.
“Is that good?”
“It is extremely good.”
We reviewed the images.
The entire incident log was there.
Amanda’s comments.
The gate conversation.
The spilled juice.
Marcus arriving.
Everything.
Even better, one photograph accidentally captured the seatback screen clock.
Another showed Captain Miller’s wings beside the notebook after he gave them to her.
The chronology was nearly impossible to fake later.
David hugged Lily.
“I told you to back up your schoolwork.”
“You also said cloud storage was annoying.”
“I withdraw that statement.”
For the first time all day, we laughed.
Then Olivia’s phone buzzed.
She read a message.
Her smile vanished.
“What?”
“The police found your notebook.”
“Where?”
Olivia looked at us.
“In a trash can behind a shopping center six miles away.”
My heart pounded.
“Fingerprints?”
“Unknown yet.”
Lily whispered, “Who took it?”
Olivia read the rest of the message.
Then she became very still.
“There’s surveillance footage.”
David stood.
“Of who?”
“A man placing something into the trash.”
“Do they know him?”
“Not yet.”
Olivia turned the phone toward us.
A grainy image showed a man wearing a baseball cap.
His face was partly visible.
But I recognized him.
I had seen him before.
Not in person.
May you like
In a photograph attached to Amanda’s legal filings.
He was a private investigator retained by Gregory Vale’s law firm.
