My son and his wife asked me to watch their two-month-old baby while they went shopping. But no matter how much I held him and tried to soothe him, he wouldn’t stop crying inconsolably. I immediately sensed something was wrong. When I lifted his clothes to check his diaper… I froze. There was something… unimaginable. My hands were shaking. I grabbed him and rushed to the hospital.

Dr. Patel returned an hour later. He looked confused, holding a new set of scans. “We’ve analyzed the pressure points of the bruising,” he said, motioning for the detectives to look. “The marks are oval. They match finger placements.”

He paused, his brow furrowing. “But there’s a discrepancy. The span of the ‘grip’ is too small. If an adult had squeezed this baby with enough force to cause a hepatic hemorrhage, the handprint would wrap nearly halfway around the torso. These marks… they are tiny.”

“How tiny?” the detective asked.

“Like the hands of a child,” Dr. Patel whispered.

The room went silent. My mind raced back to Laura. She didn’t just have a daughter; she had a five-year-old named Emma. I remembered Megan mentioning that Laura had struggled to find childcare that morning and had asked to bring Emma along.

“A five-year-old?” I asked. “Could a five-year-old do this much damage?”