My name is Christine, and when my mother-in-law gave me an antique mantel clock as a "welcome to the family" gift right after our wedding, I genuinely thought it was sweet, if a little old-fashioned.

I stood in the middle of my living room with the phone pressed to my ear and the listening device sitting in my open palm, and I made myself breathe.

"You were wondering," I said slowly.

"So you knew it was there."

"Of course I knew it was there," Dorothy said.

"I put it there."

She didn't sound ashamed.

She didn't sound nervous.

Her voice had the same smooth, unhurried quality it always did at Sunday dinners when she was explaining to me how to properly set a table or which way to fold a napkin.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because my son deserved to know what kind of woman he married."

I looked across the room at Daniel.

He was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, arms crossed, not moving toward me.

"And what kind of woman is that?" I asked.

"One who complains about his family behind closed doors," Dorothy said.

"One who hides money.

One who isn't fully committed."

"I hid forty dollars in a shoebox," I said.

"That's not a secret.

That's an emergency fund."

"It's a sign," she said.

"A woman who trusts her husband doesn't hide money from him."

"A woman who trusts her husband doesn't need a listening device in her living room."

Silence.

Then: "Christine, you're being dramatic."

I turned away from Daniel.

I walked to the window.

Outside, the neighbor's dog was barking at something in the hedges, and the afternoon light was flat and grey, and everything looked completely ordinary, which felt obscene.

"How long has it been recording?" I asked.

"Since the day after the wedding."

I did the math without meaning to.

Fourteen months.

Every conversation.

Every phone call made from that room.

Every moment I thought I was alone.

"Does Daniel have access to the recordings?" I asked.

Another pause.

Longer this time.

"Ask him yourself," Dorothy said.

I turned around.

Daniel was still in the doorway.

He hadn't moved an inch.

"Do you?" I asked him directly.

He looked at the floor.

"Mom sends me clips sometimes."

"Clips," I repeated.

"When she thinks something is important."

"Important," I said again.

I seemed to have lost the ability to form full sentences.

"She sends you clips of conversations in our home, and you listen to them."

"Christine—"

"Did you listen to the one from last March?" I asked.

"When I called my sister crying because I thought I might be pregnant and I was scared?

Did you get a clip of that?"

His jaw tightened.

He didn't answer.

That was an answer.

I set the device down on the coffee table very carefully, the way you set something down when you're afraid of what you'll do if you're not deliberate about every movement.

I picked up my keys from the hook by the door.

"Where are you going?" Daniel asked.

"I don't know yet."

"Christine, we should talk about this."

"You've had fourteen months of my private conversations," I said.

"I think I'm allowed one afternoon where I don't say anything at all."

I closed the door behind me.

I sat in my car in the driveway for eleven minutes before I could make myself drive.

My phone buzzed twice while I sat there.

Both times, Daniel.

I watched the screen light up and go dark and light up again, and I thought about every single time I had spoken freely in that house — every fear, every frustration, every small tender thing I'd said out loud when I thought no one was listening — and I felt something shift in my chest that I didn't have a name for yet.

I started the car.

I drove to my sister's house without calling ahead.

When Pauline opened the door and saw my face, she didn't ask any questions.

She just stepped back and let me in.

"I need to show you something," I said.

I opened my hand.

The device sat in my palm, small and black and impossibly ordinary-looking.

Pauline stared at it.

Then she looked up at me.

"Christine," she said quietly.

"Where did you find that?"

"Inside the clock," I said.