Chapter 6 - Bertha Started to Crack
Nate arrived in Phoenix forty-eight hours later.
Hunter was well enough to recognize him.
The first thing our son did was cry.
The second was ask whether Grandma could find him at the hospital.
Nate sat beside the bed and answered before I could.
“No.”
That single word seemed to let Hunter breathe again.
Evelyn remained under a temporary no-contact order while investigators developed the case. Bertha had not yet been charged with everything prosecutors were considering, but she was prohibited from contacting Hunter.
Then Bertha asked to cooperate.
Her attorney arranged a proffer.
She admitted filming the “practice sessions.”
She admitted knowing Evelyn made the anonymous hotline reports.
She admitted taking Hunter’s tablet and phone access whenever he resisted.
“Why?” the prosecutor asked.
Bertha stared at the table.
“Because Mom said Abigail was going to lose him eventually anyway.”
“Why would she believe that?”
“She said Abby’s just like Dad. Always leaving.”
That sentence nearly made me stand up.
My father had not left.
He had been pushed out.
Evelyn had spent decades transforming her own actions into evidence of other people’s abandonment.
Bertha also revealed the practical promise behind her loyalty.
If Evelyn obtained guardianship, Bertha would move into my mother’s house and become Hunter’s day-to-day caregiver.
“Mom said we could be a proper family again.”
“Without Abigail?”
Bertha began crying.
“She said Abigail would come back once she realized she needed us.”
There it was.
Not money.
Not inheritance.
Control.
My mother was willing to destroy my relationship with my child to force me back into dependence on her.
The same family structure she had built after removing Thomas.
But Bertha still held something back.
Morales knew it.
“When did you learn the allegations against your father were coached?”
Bertha looked at me through the one-way camera.
“When I was sixteen.”
“How?”
“I found the tapes.”
I felt physically sick.
She had known for fourteen years.
“Why didn’t you tell Abigail?”
Bertha’s answer came out almost too quietly to hear.
“Because by then Mom was all I had.”
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Loyalty had stopped being love long before.
It had become survival.
