Then the recording’s audio caught Vanessa’s voice.
“Maybe tomorrow you’ll remember who Mommy is now.”
I stopped the video.
Beside me, Vanessa began explaining.
“Leave.”
“Daniel—”
“Get out.”
Her expression changed.
But before she could move, I felt a small tug at my sleeve.
“Daddy.”
Emma was pointing toward the bookshelf in her bedroom.
“There’s another camera.”
For a moment, I thought she meant one of mine.
Then I looked between her stuffed animals.
A tiny black lens stared back at me.
I had never installed it.
When the police searched the house, they found another camera in the hallway.
Another in the laundry room.
Another inside my office.
I kept looking at Vanessa, trying to understand how she had done this without me noticing.
Then Detective Sarah Ramirez examined the camera from Emma’s bedroom.
She paused.
“How long has your wife lived here?”
“Three weeks.”
The detective checked something again.
“This camera wasn’t installed three weeks ago.”
My hand tightened around the back of Emma’s chair.
“How old is it?”
“Approximately eleven months.”
I looked at my daughter holding Bunny.
If Vanessa had only moved in three weeks ago, who had been watching Emma for the other ten months?
The tiny lens lay in Detective Ramirez’s gloved palm, no bigger than the top button on my shirt. Rain tapped against the dark windows behind her. Emma had climbed into my lap without anyone asking her to, her face hidden against my chest, Bunny trapped between us.
Detective Ramirez did not answer right away.
She turned the camera over and showed me a faint serial number stamped beneath a strip of black tape.
“Do you recognize the brand?” she asked.
I shook my head.
Vanessa stood near the dining-room doorway with her coat on, though no one had told her she could leave. Her mouth had gone pale. She kept looking past the detective toward Emma’s bedroom, like she was trying to see through the walls.
“I told you,” she said softly. “I don’t know anything about those.”
The detective’s partner, Officer Miles Carter, looked up from the open drawer of my office desk. “We found a receiver in here.”
Vanessa’s eyes snapped to him.
