Chapter 4 - The Voice on the Line
Before Carmen could launch into another threat, the silence of the room was broken by the sharp chirp of Laura’s work phone.
Laura looked at the caller ID. "It's Deputy Miller. He's at the trailer."
She pressed the speaker button, keeping her eyes locked onto Carmen’s face. "Deputy Miller, please tell me you found Anna."
The line crackled with static before the deputy's voice filled the quiet room. He sounded out of breath, his voice heavy with grim reality.
"Ms. Bennett, we found her. She was unconscious on the bedroom floor. We’ve got an ambulance rushing her to St. Mary’s right now. It looks like acute diabetic ketoacidosis. Her blood sugar was through the roof—she must have gone into a coma days ago."
A collective breath was drawn in the room. Anna hadn't abandoned her children; she had been trapped in her own body, dying in the dark while her seven-year-old daughter did everything she could to keep them alive.
"There’s something else, Ms. Bennett," the deputy's voice continued, turning cold. "We found her cell phone right next to her hand. The battery was almost dead, but there were seventeen outgoing calls to her mother, Carmen Ross. None of them were answered."
Carmen’s face drained of color, the perfect ivory of her makeup suddenly looking like a cracked mask.
"And there's one more thing," Deputy Miller said. "She left a voicemail. The timestamp shows it was sent right before she lost consciousness. The carrier network registered that the voicemail was opened and listened to by the recipient’s phone three hours ago."
The room went entirely still. The only sound was the rhythmic beep of the monitors attached to the twins.
"Play it, Deputy," Laura said.
The line hissed with static, and then a voice emerged from the speaker. It was Anna’s voice, but it was barely recognizable. It was thick, slurred, and desperate, gasping for air between words.
"Mom... please. Something is wrong with me. I can't stand up... I think I'm passing out. The babies... they haven't eaten since this morning. Camila is trying, but she's only seven. Please, Mom. I'm begging you. Forget about our fight. Come get the kids. Don't let them die in here..."
The recording ended with the sound of a phone slipping from a hand, clattering onto a hard floor, followed by the low, heavy sound of labored breathing.
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Every eye in the room turned to Carmen.
The elegant grandmother stood frozen, her designer purse slipping from her arm and hitting the floor with a dull thud. The silence was absolute, heavier than the cold mud that still clung to Camila’s bare feet.
