Laura as a little girl. Kneeling on a kitchen floor. Standing in a corner. Crying.
She stared at them in horror.
“I don’t remember this. Why don’t I remember?”
The detective answered quietly.
“Sometimes children repress traumatic memories.”
Laura looked as if the ground had disappeared beneath her.
“My mother did this to me?”
None of us needed to answer. The evidence was already there.
Then Bennett closed the folder and said, “There’s more.”
“What could possibly be worse than this?” I muttered.
He slid a typed letter across the table. It was signed by Evelyn Carter.
Laura read it first. Then her hands started trembling again.
“What does it say?” I asked.
She swallowed.
“It’s… instructions.”
“For what?”
“For raising children.”
She handed me the paper.
The first sentence made my skin crawl.
Children must be corrected early or they become uncontrollable adults.
The letter laid out Evelyn’s entire discipline philosophy. Cold exposure. Isolation. Food restriction. Emotional suppression. Every punishment Sophie had suffered was listed there like a training manual.
At the bottom was a final sentence.
This method successfully produced a disciplined daughter. It will produce a disciplined granddaughter.