My grandson called me from the police station at 2:47 a.m., choking back tears: “Grandma, my stepmother says I made her fall and Dad believes every word she says, he doesn’t believe me,” but when I arrived the officer saw me, froze, went pale and whispered, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who you were,” and from that moment my family was forced to face the truth.

“My God,” Linda whispered, watching the screen in the rearview mirror.

I heard Ethan’s shaky voice through the audio.

“What happened to my room?”

Chelsea’s voice came from downstairs, yelling:

“You pack up your mess like the pig you are. That’s why your room is like that.”

Ethan began picking up his clothes and putting them into a backpack. His hands were shaking. The camera captured him pausing in front of a broken photo on the floor. It was a picture of him with his mother, taken a year before she died. The frame was in pieces. The photo had a shoe print on it.

I watched Ethan carefully pick it up, wipe off the dust, and put it in his backpack.

“Breathe, son,” I whispered, though I knew he couldn’t hear me. “Breathe.”

He finished packing his clothes. Then he opened his desk drawer, looking for his notebooks.