Chapter 4: What She Did While We Slept
I didn't sleep well.
I lay in my bed listening to the house settle and thinking about Angela's last words.
*You've just made things much harder for yourself.* It wasn't a threat exactly.
It was quieter than a threat.
It was a promise made to herself out loud.
At some point after midnight I heard movement downstairs.
Soft, careful footsteps.
A drawer opening.
The sound of paper.
I told myself it was nothing.
In the morning, Dad made breakfast.
Angela came down in a silk robe, poured herself coffee, and sat at the table like the night before hadn't happened.
She didn't look at me.
She didn't look at Dad.
She scrolled through her phone and sipped her coffee and waited.
Dad put a plate of eggs in front of her.
"We should finish the conversation," he said.
"I agree," Angela said pleasantly.
She set her phone face-down on the table.
"I've been thinking about it all night, actually."
"So have I."
"Good." She folded her hands around her mug.
"Then you'll understand why I called my sister this morning."
Dad stopped.
"Your sister."
"Renee.
Yes." Angela looked up at him for the first time.
"I told her what happened.
I told her that you set a trap for me in my own marriage.
That you used our stepdaughter to gather evidence against me.
That you lied about a camera to frighten me." She paused.
"She's a family attorney, as you know."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"You called a lawyer," Dad said.
"I called my sister," Angela said.
"Who happens to be a lawyer.
There's a difference."
I watched Dad's face.
He was working to keep it still.
"Angela, I didn't set a trap.
I read a notebook that my daughter left in her own room.
I was worried about her."
"And the fake camera?"
"I wanted to understand what you'd do."
"What I'd do." Angela nodded slowly.
"And what did I do, exactly?
I raised my voice at a campsite.
I asked a teenager to help with chores.
I said something unkind that I regret." She looked at me then, directly, for the first time all morning.
"I do regret it, Lily.
The maid comment.
I shouldn't have let that go uncorrected."
It was the most carefully constructed apology I had ever heard.
It apologized for exactly one thing, named by Angela herself, on Angela's terms.
"That's not all that's in the notebook," I said.
"No," she agreed.
"But a notebook written by a sixteen-year-old girl who has resented me since the day I moved in is not exactly an objective document, is it?"
"Angela." Dad's voice had an edge now.
"I'm not being cruel," she said.
"I'm being honest.
Lily doesn't like me.
She has never liked me.
And I have tried — I have genuinely tried — and it has never been enough." She looked back at Dad.
"So before we talk about what I did wrong at a campsite, I think we should talk about the environment in this house.
And what it has been like for me."
She picked up her phone and stood.
"Renee is coming for dinner on Thursday," she said.
"I think it would be good for all three of us to sit down together."
She carried her coffee out of the kitchen.
Dad stood at the stove for a long moment.
Then he pulled out a chair and sat down heavily.
"Dad," I said.
"She's bringing a lawyer into our house."
"She's bringing her sister to dinner."
"Dad."
He rubbed his face with both hands.
"I know."
"What are we going to do?"
He didn't answer right away.
He looked at the notebook, still sitting on the edge of the table where he'd left it the night before.
He reached over and picked it up.
"I'm going to make some calls today," he said.
"Don't worry about Thursday yet."
"What kind of calls?"
He looked at me.
There was something in his expression I hadn't seen before — not anger, not fear exactly.
Something older and quieter than either.
"The kind I should have made a long time ago," he said.
He took the notebook with him when he left the kitchen.
That afternoon, while Angela was out, I went back to my room and opened my laptop.
I had kept digital notes too — dates, times, screenshots of texts Angela had sent me when Dad wasn't home.
Things like *don't mention this to your father* and *I'll tell him you started it* and, once, after I'd forgotten to do the laundry: *you are exactly as useless as your mother was.*
I had never shown those to anyone.
I opened the folder and started reading from the beginning.
May you like
There were forty-seven messages.
Going back fourteen months.
