Chapter 5 - The Wayzata Web
By the second week of December, the true extent of Beatatrice Vance’s "holistic empire" began to unravel in the local press. She wasn't just a quirky grandmother with an interest in herbs; she had been running an unlicensed, high-end alternative medicine consultancy out of her multi-million-dollar home in Wayzata, selling unregulated, dangerous botanical mixtures to wealthy, desperate mothers throughout the suburbs.
The police discovered that three other infants under her "care" had been hospitalized over the past two years with unexplained metabolic acidosis and high fevers. The parents had been pressured into silence by Beatatrice’s high-priced corporate defense lawyers and Grant’s financial position at the logistics firm.
I sat at my kitchen table, my house finally quiet after Grant’s removal, reading the front-page article in the Star Tribune. The phone rang. It was an unknown number.
I answered, keeping my finger near the record button. "Hello?"
"Claire, it’s Carmen," a desperate, sharp voice hissed over the line. It was Grant's older sister, a woman who had spent years ignoring me at family dinners. "You have to drop the charges against Mom. You're destroying the family name! Do you know what people are saying at the country club? They're calling us poisoners! Grant is facing termination from his partnership! If he loses his job, the alimony you want won't exist anyway!"
"I don't care about the alimony, Carmen," I said, my voice dead calm as I looked at Hazel, who was playing happily with her wooden blocks on the living room rug. "Your mother almost put my son in a coffin. She terrorized my daughter. If the family name burns to the ground, I will gladly watch the smoke."
"You selfish little bitch," Carmen snarled. "You’ve always been an outsider. You think you're safe? We have the best lawyers in the state. We will drag your mental health history through the mud in the custody trial. We’ll show the judge every single therapy session you took after your father died."
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"Go ahead," I whispered. "My father was a pediatrician who taught me how to save children. Your mother is a criminal who tried to kill one. Let’s see which history the judge likes better."
I hung up, blocking her instantly. The fear they used to inspire in me was gone, replaced by a fierce, maternal armor that nothing could penetrate.
