At Our Weekly Sunday Dinner, My Daughter Squeezed My Hand And Whispered

Detective Grimes

Morning came slowly, and I hadn’t slept, Oliver drooling on my shoulder, when a man in a gray suit walked in.

“I’m Detective Desmond Grimes,”

he said, shaking my hand.

“I need to see everything you have.”

I showed him the complete text chain between Brandon and Oilia, scrolling through months of messages about doses and weights and that Dr. Kumar, who was apparently in on it.

Then I pulled up the credit card statements I’d found—dozens of charges to overseas that Brandon had hidden from me.

Grimes took photos of everything then sat down with a notebook.

“Here’s how this works,”

he said.

“The texts are good evidence, but we need the actual pills to make charges stick.”

He explained about search warrants and building a case, telling me to document everything from now on: every symptom, every conversation, every medical record.

“We can get them on child endangerment for sure, maybe more depending on what we find.”

Reevaluating the Past

Just after lunch, a woman with graying hair and a worn briefcase arrived.

“I’m Melinda Haynes from CPS,”

she said, sitting down carefully like she didn’t want to scare us.

She pulled out the three previous reports where neighbors had called about Xi, reading through them with new eyes.

“They thought you were starving her,”

she said slowly.

“But looking at this pattern with what we know now, she was poisoned the whole time.”

Oliver wouldn’t let go of my hand during the entire interview, pressing against me while Melinda asked gentle questions about what he’d seen at home.

He told her about Xi falling down at dinner and Daddy giving her special candy and how he kept food in his room because he was scared of getting sick too.

Melinda took notes, her face getting sadder with each detail, promising Oliver that she would help keep him and Gigi safe.

The Paper Trail

That night, after Melinda left, I sat in the empty hospital hallway with my laptop balanced on my knees.

The harsh fluorescent lights made my eyes burn as I started typing everything I could remember: every symptom Xi ever had, every doctor visit where they couldn’t explain her heart racing, every time she threw up her dinner, every collapse at the school that got blamed on me not feeding her enough.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, my nurse training kicking in as I organized it all into a timeline that showed the pattern clearly.

The more I typed, the angrier I got because it was all there—months of my baby suffering while I got blamed for it.

I pulled up our online banking next, scrolling through transaction after transaction I’d never paid attention to before.

Discovering the Betrayal

There they were: dozens of charges to websites with names like Pharma Direct and Overseas RX, all on a credit card in Oilia’s name, but the payments came straight from our joint checking account.

Some charges were $200, some were $500, and they went back almost a year.

The betrayal felt worse seeing it laid out in black and white—every transaction proof that Brandon had been planning this while I worked night shifts to pay for Xi’s medical bills.

I took screenshots of everything, saving them to three different cloud accounts because I wasn’t taking any chances with this evidence disappearing.

Around 2:00 in the morning, I walked down to the lab where my former colleague Sarah was working the night shift.

She recognized me immediately, and her face went soft when I explained about the criminal investigation and needing Xi’s samples preserved under forensic protocol.

Protecting the Children

Sarah promised she’d handle it personally, labeling everything with proper chain of custody documentation and storing it in the locked forensic freezer.

Having someone on my side who understood the medical side of this helped more than I could say.

The next afternoon, Brandon showed up at the PICU, trying to sweet-talk the nurses into letting him see Xi, telling them I was having a mental breakdown and making false accusations.

The charge nurse called security when he wouldn’t leave, and I showed them the emergency protective order paperwork I was getting ready to file.

Brandon’s face went red when security escorted him out, yelling that I couldn’t keep him from his daughter.

But they made it clear he wasn’t getting anywhere near Xi without a court order.

Filing for Protection

Detective Grimes called me that evening, his voice serious as he explained I needed to file for an emergency protective order right away to keep Brandon and Oilia away from the kids legally.

He emailed me the forms and walked me through each section over the phone, making sure I understood what to write and what evidence to attach.

The next morning, I drove to the courthouse with Oliver sleeping in his car seat, my hands steady as I filled out every page of the protective order request.

I wrote out exactly what they’d done to Xi, attached the screenshots of the texts and bank statements, and included the preliminary toxicology report from the hospital.

The clerk took one look at the medical records and expedited everything, scheduling the hearing for the next morning.

Corroborating Evidence

That afternoon, I met with Sanenade Padet, Oliver’s school counselor, in a small conference room at the school while a nurse watched Gigi at the hospital.

Sanenade pulled out a thick folder she’d been keeping for months full of notes about Oliver’s behavior changes, his food hoarding, and the times he’d told her about Gigi getting sick at home.

She documented everything: dates, times, and direct quotes from Oliver about being scared to eat dinner.

This independent record from someone outside our family would be huge for our case.

Three days later, my phone rang with Oilia’s number, and I almost didn’t answer.

But then I remembered we lived in a one-party consent state for recording.

A Confession on Tape

I hit record on my phone and answered, listening to her sob about how sorry she was, how she never meant for any of this to happen.

I kept my voice calm, asking her questions about the pills, and she admitted she’d been giving them to Xi after school for months.

She said Brandon convinced her it was safe, that the pills weren’t supposed to hurt Xi this much, and that she only wanted to help Brandon with his stress about the Miami job.

I let her talk for twenty minutes, getting everything on tape while I took notes on exactly what she was admitting to.

Detective Grimes called the next morning to tell me he’d gotten search warrants for both Brandon’s nightstand and Oilia’s apartment based on all the evidence we’d gathered.

They were going to execute both warrants at the same time that afternoon so neither of them could warn the other or destroy evidence.