Chapter 4: The Key and the Camera
I sat in the driver's seat without starting the engine.
"He has a key," Lily said again.
She held up two fingers.
"A shiny one.
He put it in his pocket."
I looked at my front door.
The porch light was on.
Through the window I could see the shadow of Renata still standing in the dining room.
I called my brother, Marcus.
He picked up on the second ring.
"I need somewhere to take Lily tonight."
A pause.
"What happened?"
"I'll explain when I get there.
Is that okay?"
"Of course it's okay.
Come now."
I drove.
Lily fell asleep before we reached the end of our street.
I kept one hand on the wheel and one eye on the rearview mirror.
Marcus lived twenty minutes away.
His wife, Donna, had the spare room made up before I finished parking.
She took Lily from my arms without asking a single question, carried her upstairs, and I heard the soft click of the bedroom door.
Marcus handed me a glass of water.
I told him everything.
He didn't interrupt.
He sat across from me at his kitchen table and listened until I stopped talking.
Then he said, "The camera footage.
You still have access to it?"
"It's on the cloud.
I can pull every recording from the last six months."
"Then that's the first thing." He leaned forward.
"Before she deletes it."
I hadn't thought of that.
Sandra knew about the cameras.
She had been there when I installed the system two years ago.
She knew the app, the login, the cloud backup settings.
I pulled out my phone and opened the security app.
The system showed four cameras: front door, back door, living room, kitchen.
The bedroom camera had been removed from the system.
Deregistered.
Three weeks ago.
The night I left for my trip.
"She took it down," I said.
Marcus looked at the screen.
"But the others are still there?"
"Yes."
"Download everything.
Right now.
All of it."
I started the download.
Six months of footage.
It would take time.
While it ran, Marcus said quietly, "The key Lily mentioned.
If this man has a key to your house—"
"I know."
"You need to change the locks before she goes back."
"She's not going back.
Not until I understand exactly what's been happening in that house."
Marcus nodded.
He didn't push.
The download finished at 2 AM.
I went through the files in order, oldest first, moving fast, looking for timestamps after 10 PM on nights I was traveling.
There were fourteen of them.
Fourteen nights.
A car I didn't recognize in the driveway.
The front door opening.
The same figure, tall, dark jacket, moving through my living room like he already knew where everything was.
He did know.
He walked straight to the kitchen, opened the correct cabinet, poured himself a drink.
He knew which cabinet.
On the ninth recording, Lily appeared at the top of the stairs.
She was in her pajamas.
She stood there for a moment, looking down.
Then Sandra's voice came from the hallway, sharp and low.
"Lily.
Go back to bed."
"Who is that man?"
"Nobody.
Go to bed."
"Why is he here?"
And then the footage showed Sandra walking to the bottom of the stairs, taking Lily by the wrist, and pulling her back toward her room.
Not gently.
I watched it three times.
Marcus watched it with me the third time.
He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
I saved every file to two separate drives and emailed copies to myself and to Marcus.
Then I sat back and thought about the lawyer I had used three years ago for a property contract.
Her name was Grace Ellison.
I had her card somewhere.
I found it in my wallet at 3 AM.
I didn't call her that night.
But I held the card in my hand for a long time.
In the morning, Lily woke up and came downstairs and climbed into my lap and asked if we were going home.
"Not yet, sweetheart."
She thought about that.
"Is Mommy sad?"
"I don't know."
"Is the man still there?"
I looked at her.
Three years old.
She had been carrying this alone for weeks.
"No," I said.
"He's not going to be there anymore."
She nodded like that was the right answer.
Then she asked Donna for cereal, and the moment passed the way moments do with small children — completely, without ceremony.
But I kept thinking about the cabinet.
May you like
The way he walked straight to it.
How many times had he been there before the cameras caught him?
