CHAPTER 4 — THE BASEMENT CAMERA
Westbridge Mall had been dying for ten years.
That mattered.
A healthy mall replaces broken systems. A dying mall keeps old ones working long past pride because nobody has money to change them. Westbridge still had service corridors from the 1980s, ceiling mirrors in odd corners, and a security room where half the cameras were new and half looked like they recorded on prayer.
Three days before Sophie found me, a jewelry store complained about missing inventory.
Denise Parker had installed a temporary camera in the basement corridor outside the family restroom service elevator.
Lydia did not know that.
Rich people often forget the back corridors belong to workers and cameras.
In the mall security office, Denise pulled the footage onto a monitor.
Officer Cole stood behind her.
Sophie sat beside me with both hands around a paper cup of water.
Lydia and Charles sat across the room with an attorney on speakerphone telling everyone not to answer anything.
Nobody listened much.
The footage showed Lydia at 11:42 a.m.
Cream blazer.
Purple backpack.
No Sophie.
She stepped out of the service elevator, checked both directions, crouched near a maintenance door, opened the lining of the backpack, removed the round device, pressed something with her thumbnail, then tucked it back inside.
On the audio from the temporary camera, her phone call was faint but understandable.
“She remembered the mall,” Lydia said. “If she sees Mercer, the whole name-change petition becomes a problem.”
A pause.
Then Lydia again.
“No. Keep Charles calm. The trust transfer closes after adoption, not before.”
Officer Cole paused the video.
“What trust?”
Charles looked at Lydia.
Lydia looked at the wall.
That was answer enough to start.
Sophie whispered, “Mommy’s school money.”
I turned to her.
“What school money?”
She looked down.
“Mommy said Grandma made it for kids whose parents died. Aunt Lydia said kids can’t own money.”
That was not quite legally correct.
It was the kind of half-truth adults use on children because children cannot hire attorneys.
Denise rewound the footage.
At the end of the clip, Lydia stood and said one more sentence into the phone.
“I don’t care if she still thinks she’s Sophie. By Friday, Emily signs.”
Sophie’s cup crumpled in her hands.
I wanted to reach for her.
I waited.
She leaned into my side first.
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For three years, people had called me obsessive for noticing her fear.
Now a camera in the basement of a failing mall had noticed it too.
