What Mia Remembered
Chapter 05 - What Mia Remembered
Mia's recovery continued steadily over the following days, her voice growing stronger, her memory of the events at the estate returning in clearer, more detailed pieces the further she got from the initial trauma.
"There's something else," she told Detective Cruz, during a follow-up interview four days after the pillow incident. "Something Vivian said, right before she pushed me. I didn't understand it at the time. I think I understand it now."
"What did she say," Cruz asked.
"She said, 'you're not the first person to ask inconvenient questions in this family, and you won't be the last to regret it,'" Mia said slowly. "I thought she meant generally, some vague warning about the family's private business. I think now she might have meant something specific."
Cruz's expression sharpened. "Do you know of anyone else who asked inconvenient questions."
Mia hesitated. "Marco's father. He died when Marco was twelve, a fall down the main staircase at the estate, the same staircase Vivian pushed me down. I never thought about the connection until right now."
Cruz made a note, careful and deliberate. "How did the family explain his death at the time."
"An accident," Mia said. "He'd been drinking, apparently. Lost his footing at the top of the stairs late at night. Nobody questioned it, as far as I know. Vivian inherited controlling interest in the family's business holdings shortly after, which funded the foundation's early endowment."
"That's a significant coincidence," Cruz said, "assuming it is one."
Marco, present for this portion of the interview, sat in stunned silence, processing a version of his own father's death he'd never once had reason to question in twenty years.
"You think she killed my father too," he said finally, voice barely audible.
"I don't know yet," Cruz said carefully. "I think it's worth reopening the original investigation into his death, given everything we're now learning about your mother's pattern of behavior around inconvenient truths and staircases specifically. I'd rather investigate thoroughly and find nothing than ignore a pattern this specific."
Marco nodded, feeling a grief he hadn't expected to feel this directly, a father he'd mourned for two decades as the victim of a tragic accident, now potentially the victim of the same woman who'd just tried to smother his wife in a hospital bed.
"I need to see the original police report," he said. "From twenty years ago. I need to understand what was actually investigated at the time, and what might have been missed."
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Cruz agreed to pull the archived file, though she cautioned both of them that records from two decades earlier, particularly for a death ruled accidental with no immediate suspicion attached, might be considerably thinner than either of them hoped.
"Even a thin file might tell us something," Mia said. "Especially now that we know what to actually look for."
