Chapter 3

Isaac's assurances and explanations eased some of my worries. It was true that children's minds could work in strange ways sometimes.

There was a time when Caleb kept saying he wanted to eat brains, and it had taken me a while to realize he meant spaghetti bolognese. I laughed myself silly once I figured that out. Perhaps he had indeed mixed up the story Isaac told him with reality this time.

The next morning, I made a point of taking Caleb to kindergarten myself. As soon as we arrived at the front gates, I saw Bryan and Annette walking toward us.

Bryan was wearing a blue jacket, bouncing along as he walked. The moment he saw us, he waved his little hand and called out, "Caleb! Mrs. Sheridan!"

He was smiling brightly, and he seemed to be in good spirits. It didn't look like he'd suffered any kind of mistreatment.

I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly took Caleb over to them.

"I'm really sorry about yesterday, Annette. Caleb is too young to know better. He must've mistaken a story for reality. I apologize for causing you concern."

Annette's expression remained displeased, but once she saw Bryan and Caleb holding hands and laughing together, her tone eased up.

"Let's just forget about it. He's just a child, and he didn't do it on purpose. Just make sure he doesn't listen to so many ridiculous stories from now on."

As I watched the two children walk into the kindergarten together, most of my doubts finally faded away. I turned around and headed to work, my steps noticeably lighter.

Never could I have imagined that just after the lunch break ended that day, messages would start flooding the parents' group chat. The rapidly climbing number of unread messages couldn't be more alarming. I hastily tapped into the group chat to find the parents in an uproar.

One of them posted a photo from the kindergarten. It showed several teachers gathered by the small fish pond in the kindergarten.

Then a message appeared that made my blood run cold.

"One of the teachers just confirmed that Bryan fell into the fish pond. They couldn't resuscitate him."

I stared at the words on the screen, my fingers trembling uncontrollably as my mind went completely blank.

The little boy who'd been happily bouncing around and had greeted me that morning was now dead? How did he end up drowning out of nowhere? How devastated must Annette be right now?

Then I recalled what Caleb had said about Bryan being taken away by a teacher and brought into a punishment room. Could it be…

I didn't dare go down that train of thought. It felt like someone was squeezing my heart tightly. I even had difficulty breathing.

In the surveillance footage provided by the kindergarten, all the children were lying down in their designated spots during nap time, but Bryan had sat up. While the teacher on duty had her back turned as she tucked in one of the other kids, he'd quietly slipped out of the nap room.

He walked all the way to the playground without the slightest hesitation, heading straight for the fish pond. He grabbed the railing around the pond and climbed over it.

The water instantly closed over his head. He struggled several times, his little hands flailing wildly, but there wasn't a single person around.

Within seconds, his body slowly sank beneath the water, and the surface soon became still again.

The footage rocked me to the core.

Bryan was usually terrified of water. The last time the class had an activity at the pool, he hadn't even dared to enter the shallow end. How could he have willingly climbed into the fish pond? Could this really have been a coincidence?

I suddenly remembered what Caleb had said the day before. A chill ran down my spine, and I hurriedly messaged Annette.

"Annette, you have to hold yourself together. Yesterday, Caleb said that he saw a teacher take Bryan away, and now this has happened. I just feel like something isn't right. There might be more to this."

The moment I sent the message, my phone rang. It was Annette. Her voice was thick with sobs, but it was also filled with hysterical fury.

"What more could there possibly be to it? I just watched the complete surveillance footage. Before nap time, Caleb was talking to Bryan for quite a while. After that, Bryan seemed completely out of it, and then this happened during nap time!

"After all that nonsense you told me yesterday, I'm sure Caleb must have said something to Bryan and scared him so badly that he fell into the fish pond!

"Your Caleb has everything to do with what happened to my son! We've already called the police. I'm going to expose your child's behavior and have everyone know that he killed my son!"