But I heard enough.
She was still calling it an exercise.
She was still saying our daughter hadn’t been bitten.
She was still insisting that the snakes had been controlled.
That last phrase stayed with me.
Controlled.
As if controlling the danger made putting a terrified toddler beside it acceptable.
The responder returned to the phone.
“There’s something else you need to understand.”
I waited.
“Your wife’s recordings don’t just show what happened. They may show what she believed she was documenting.”
I frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“We don’t know yet.”
He handed the phone to another responder for preservation.
Then he asked me whether there were other places in the house where my wife kept equipment.
I thought about it.
“No.”
I almost said no again.
Then I remembered the locked storage room.
My wife had always kept that room organized. She told me it was for gardening supplies, seasonal decorations, and things we didn’t use often. I had never had a reason to go through it.
