Margaret silently reached into her handbag and removed a small notebook.
“I wanted to. But I was afraid.”
Inside were dated observations.
Emily complained of headaches.
Emily said the television picture looked doubled.
Emily struggled on the stairs.
Emily didn’t respond when I called her name.
I stared at her.
“You knew all this?”
“I thought she was tired. Then I got scared you’d never trust me with her again. I kept postponing the conversation.”
Her silence had put Emily at risk.
But the notebook contained another surprise.
Beside several dates, Margaret had written numbers indicating how long Emily’s strange episodes lasted.
“Sometimes she saw flashing lights,” Margaret explained. “I started timing the episodes. Then I recorded them.”
Suddenly, I understood what the doctor had discovered on the phone.
The last opened application wasn’t a game.
It contained videos of Emily’s frightening symptoms.
In one recording, my daughter sat on the couch beside Buddy.
