Chapter 3

The interrogation room was small, gray, and cold. Detective Harding sat across from Sarah, his expression unreadable. Officer Ramirez stood by the door.

"Mrs. Miller," Harding began, his tone measured. "We know about your history. The postpartum depression. Severe, wasn't it?"

Sarah nodded, a lump in her throat. "It was... a long time ago. I got help. I was better. I loved Lily more than anything."

"Sometimes these things can return," Harding said, not unkindly, but with a clear implication. "A psychotic break, perhaps, triggered by stress?"

Sarah felt a flicker of her old fear, the fear that she wasn't truly well, that the darkness could reclaim her.

"No," she insisted, but her voice trembled. "It wasn't like that. I loved Lily. I would never hurt her."

But the seed of doubt, planted by David's words and now watered by the detective, began to sprout in her own mind. What if she had blacked out? What if she had done something monstrous and couldn't remember?

The pressure mounted. Days blurred into a haze of questioning, accusations, and the relentless glare of public scrutiny.

David, through his lawyer, issued a statement expressing his profound grief and his belief that Sarah needed "serious psychiatric help."

It was David who suggested Dr. Peterson.

"He's a good clinical psychologist," David had told Harding, his voice heavy with feigned concern. "Maybe he can help Sarah understand what happened. Help us all understand."

Dr. Peterson had a somewhat tarnished reputation, whispers of past malpractice, but he was available and willing.

Sarah, exhausted, confused, and starting to genuinely question her own sanity, agreed to the evaluation. She felt like she was drowning, grasping for any lifeline.

Dr. Peterson was a man with shifty eyes and an overly soothing voice. He listened to Sarah's fragmented denials, her confusion, her fear.

"It's clear you're suffering from significant trauma and memory gaps, Sarah," he said, his tone sympathetic. "Sometimes, under extreme stress, the mind can block out unbearable events."

He then proposed a solution. "Hypnosis. It can be a very effective tool for recovering lost memories. It might help you access what truly happened that morning."

Sarah hesitated. Hypnosis sounded extreme, frightening.

But what if he was right? What if the truth was locked away inside her, too terrible to face consciously?

"Will it... will it show what really happened?" she asked, her voice small.

"It can help bring clarity," Dr. Peterson said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.

Desperate for answers, for an end to the torment of not knowing, Sarah agreed.

The first hypnosis session was disorienting. Dr. Peterson's voice droned on, soft and persuasive. He guided her back to that morning at the community center.

Images flickered in her mind, hazy and distorted. Lily's laughter. The smell of paint.

Then, under Dr. Peterson's careful prompting, new images began to form, vivid and horrifying.

She saw herself holding the large crafting shears. She felt an inexplicable rage, a dark impulse. She saw Lily looking up at her, confused, scared.

And then... the act itself.

The memory, so clear, so detailed, so sickeningly real, flooded her senses.

When Dr. Peterson brought her out of the hypnosis, Sarah was sobbing, gasping for air.

"I did it," she choked out, the words tearing from her throat. "Oh god, I remember. I killed my Lily."

The horror of the implanted memory was absolute. She believed it. She had murdered her own daughter.