Chapter 3 - THE FIRST CAMERA
It sat behind a stack of cookbooks.
Tiny.
Black.
Facing the kitchen table.
Claire stared at it for nearly a minute before touching it.
At first she assumed Daniel had installed it.
Home security.
Pet camera.
Something stupid and explainable.
Then she remembered they didn’t have a pet.
She pulled the device down.
There was a memory card inside.
Daniel came home twenty minutes later.
Claire put the camera on the counter.
“What is this?”
He stared.
“I don’t know.”
“You installed it?”
“No.”
“Your mother?”
His face changed.
“Claire.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He picked up the camera.
“Maybe it’s old.”
“We have lived here four years.”
“Maybe it came with something.”
“It was pointed at the table.”
Daniel said nothing.
Claire took out the memory card.
“Let’s look.”
Daniel hesitated.
That hesitation hurt more than she expected.
“You don’t want to know?”
“I don’t want to accuse my mother of something insane without knowing.”
“That is literally why we should look.”
They inserted the card into a laptop.
Most clips were short.
Motion activated.
Claire making coffee.
Claire opening mail.
Claire speaking with Daniel at dinner.
Then one clip showed Margaret entering the kitchen alone.
She walked straight to the camera.
Adjusted its angle.
Checked the light.
Walked away.
Daniel stared at the screen.
Claire looked at him.
“Say something.”
He didn’t.
“Daniel.”
“She probably wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Claire almost laughed.
“What?”
“You’re pregnant. Maybe—”
“She hid a camera in our kitchen.”
“I know how it looks.”
“How it looks?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
That sentence became important later.
Claire removed the card.
“She leaves tomorrow.”
“She’ll deny it.”
“I don’t care.”
“Claire—”
“No.”
He looked exhausted.
She felt furious.
Neither noticed Margaret standing at the far end of the hallway.
Listening.
The next morning the camera was gone.
So was the memory card.
Claire had left it inside her laptop bag.
The bag had been unzipped.
Margaret denied everything.
“You must have misplaced it.”
Daniel knew better.
Claire knew he knew.
Still, he asked his mother only one question.
“Did you take it?”
Margaret burst into tears.
That ended the confrontation.
Not because anyone believed her.
Because Daniel had been trained his entire life to stop asking once his mother cried.
Claire understood then that the real problem in the house was not Margaret.
May you like
It was the system around her.
And Claire was pregnant inside it.
