Chapter 1 - I Woke Up With a Three-Year-Old Sitting on My Chest
I woke because something small was pressing against my ribs.
For several seconds, I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.
Brown curls.
Pink pajamas.
A stuffed rabbit.
Then three-year-old Sophie Cole leaned over my face and whispered:
“Mr. Daniel, Mommy says wake up.”
I sat upright too quickly.
Sophie rolled sideways onto the mattress.
She wasn’t hurt, but she startled and began crying.
“Hey, hey. You’re okay.”
My name is Daniel Brooks. I was forty-one then, living alone in a large house outside Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sophie was my housekeeper Marissa Cole’s daughter.
She was never supposed to be upstairs.
Marissa occasionally brought Sophie when daycare closed, but we had a simple rule: Sophie stayed with her mother in the kitchen, laundry room, or downstairs family area.
There were stairs.
A swimming pool.
Cleaning chemicals.
And I was not comfortable having an unsupervised toddler wandering through a 5,000-square-foot house.
I reached for my T-shirt.
That was when a woman screamed from the doorway.
“What are you doing to her?”
Marissa’s mother, Gloria Cole, stood in the hall holding up her phone.
Recording.
Behind her came Marissa.
“Sophie!”
She rushed to the bed and grabbed her daughter.
Sophie stopped crying almost immediately.
“I didn’t know she was here,” I said.
Gloria pointed the phone at me.
“I saw you shove her.”
“What?”
“You threw a three-year-old across the bed.”
“I woke up with her sitting on me.”
Marissa stared at my bare chest.
Then at Sophie.
Then at Gloria.
Something about her expression bothered me.
Not outrage.
Fear.
“Marissa,” I said, “why was Sophie in my bedroom?”
Gloria answered.
“She wandered in.”
Sophie looked at her grandmother.
“No.”
Everything stopped.
Gloria lowered the phone slightly.
Sophie pointed toward her mother.
“Mommy said climb.”
Marissa went white.
Gloria immediately said:
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
I got out of bed.
“Everybody downstairs.”
Gloria stepped between me and the doorway.
“You’re not telling us what to do after putting your hands on that child.”
“I did not put my hands on Sophie.”
“You knocked her down.”
“I woke suddenly.”
“You threatened my granddaughter.”
That was new.
“I never threatened anybody.”
Gloria reached into her purse and produced a folded sheet.
“You’ll say that now.”
I took it.
At the top:
WITNESS STATEMENT REGARDING CHILD ENDANGERMENT
My name was already typed into it.
So was the date.
Today’s date.
The statement claimed Gloria witnessed me “angrily seize and throw” Sophie after discovering her in my bedroom.
I looked at the clock.
9:18 a.m.
I had awakened less than five minutes earlier.
Yet Gloria already had a typed witness statement.
I handed it back.
“You prepared this before I woke up.”
Her face changed.
Only for a second.
Then Marissa whispered:
“Mom.”
Gloria snapped:
“Be quiet.”
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That was when I stopped wondering whether Sophie had wandered upstairs.
Someone had put her there.
