Chapter 4: More Than One Saturday
He had three more clips.
He hadn't planned to show them all tonight.
He had found the first one by accident — scrolling back through motion alerts on a Sunday morning while Rachel was still asleep, looking for a clip of the fox that had been getting into the bins.
He found the fox.
He also found his mother sending Mia to the hallway with a bowl of dry cereal while she and Liam watched cartoons together on the sofa.
He had sat with that clip for four days before he said anything to Rachel.
Rachel had gone very still when she watched it.
Then she had asked him to check further back.
They had found seven clips over three months.
He played the second one now.
This one was from the kitchen doorway camera.
His mother was helping Liam with a puzzle at the coffee table.
Mia came in from the hallway and crouched down to help.
His mother's hand moved to the edge of the puzzle board.
Gently.
Deliberately.
She slid it slightly away from Mia's reach.
"This is a Liam puzzle," she said.
"Why don't you go draw something?"
Mia looked at the puzzle.
Then at her grandmother.
Then she stood up and walked out of frame.
Liam didn't say anything.
He was five.
He kept fitting pieces together.
Daniel stopped the clip.
"She doesn't even know she's doing it," Rachel said.
Her voice had changed.
The quiet was gone.
"Or she does know and she just doesn't care."
"I know exactly what I'm doing," his mother said.
The table went still again.
A different kind of still.
"I beg your pardon?" Rachel said.
His mother folded her hands on the table.
When she spoke, her voice was composed, almost formal, as though she had been waiting for this moment and had rehearsed it carefully.
"Liam is a boy.
He carries the family name.
He will carry it forward.
That is not favoritism — that is reality.
My mother did the same for my brother.
Her mother did the same before that.
It is how families survive."
Daniel stared at her.
"You believe that."
"I do."
"You genuinely believe our daughter deserves less."
"I believe your son deserves more.
There is a difference."
Rachel stood up.
Her chair scraped the floor.
"There is no difference.
There is no version of that sentence that is acceptable in this house, or any house, or anywhere near my children."
"Rachel —"
"No." She turned to Daniel.
"I want her to say it again.
In front of Mia.
I want her to say it directly to our daughter's face."
His mother looked at Mia for the first time all evening.
Mia was standing beside her father, her small hand wrapped around two of his fingers, watching her grandmother with those wide, careful eyes that missed nothing.
His mother looked away first.
"I love both my grandchildren," she said.
"You love them differently," Daniel said.
"And you just told us why."
"I was raised to understand —"
"You were raised wrong." The words came out flat.
Final.
"And I am not raising my children the way you were raised."
His mother's jaw tightened.
"You will regret speaking to me this way."
"Maybe," Daniel said.
"But she won't." He looked down at Mia.
"She won't regret a single thing."
His mother picked up her napkin, set it beside her plate, and looked at him with an expression he had never seen on her face before.
Not anger.
Something older than anger.
"You have a sister," she said quietly.
"Ask her how she turned out.
Ask her what being treated equally got her."
Daniel went cold.
He had a sister.
Diane.
Twelve years older.
They hadn't spoken in four years.
May you like
He had never known why Diane left.
Until right now.
