I knew something was wrong the moment the responder asked how long my wife had been doing the training sessions.
Not whether she had done them before.
How long.
I sat there with our daughter’s tiny fingers still curled around mine and stared at the phone on the table between us. My wife’s explanation from the house was still ringing in my ears. She had called the cage an exercise. She had called the snakes motivation. She had insisted our daughter had been in no real danger.
But the person questioning me was no longer asking about the few minutes I had personally witnessed.
They were asking about a pattern.
“I told you,” I said. “That was the first one I knew about.”
The responder glanced at the screen again.
Then he turned the phone toward me.
“There are other recordings.”
My stomach tightened.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
