Chapter 9 - A Video That Never Happened.
Rebecca Sloan agreed to forward the second video to Daniel while warning us not to distribute it.
It arrived three minutes later.
The clip was nine seconds long.
I watched myself holding Lily near the dining table.
My body jerked once.
Lily's head appeared to snap backward.
The image looked horrifying at first glance.
Then I noticed my mouth.
The movement did not match the words I remembered saying.
Daniel noticed something else.
"Your sleeve."
In the clip, the cuff of my dark blue shirt was rolled twice.
During dinner, I had rolled it once.
It was a tiny difference.
But the security footage proved it.
"This isn't from tonight," I said.
Daniel scrubbed through the clip frame by frame.
"The background is our old apartment."
He pointed to a brass floor lamp behind me.
We had sold it before moving into this house.
My stomach turned.
I remembered the real moment.
Lily had been nine months old.
She had choked briefly on mashed banana.
I had lifted her quickly and repositioned her against my shoulder while Daniel called the pediatric nurse line.
Margaret had been visiting.
She had filmed part of it because she was always filming Lily.
Now the clip had been cropped, slowed, and stripped of sound.
A frightened mother helping a coughing baby had been turned into something violent.
Daniel sat heavily in the chair.
"She kept this for more than a year."
"Apparently."
He called his mother.
She answered immediately.
"Daniel, sweetheart—"
"What did you send Rebecca?"
Margaret went silent.
"The truth."
"It's from our old apartment."
Another silence.
"You were there," Daniel said.
"Lily was choking."
Margaret's voice hardened.
"Claire was rough with her."
"She was trying to help her breathe."
"You don't remember everything."
Daniel stood, pacing.
"I remember enough."
"She's turned you against me already."
"No."
He stopped.
"You did that yourself."
Margaret laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
"After I spent my entire life protecting you?"
Daniel's face tightened.
"From what?"
"From people who use you."
Her words carried years of history I did not fully understand.
"Dad?"
Daniel asked it quietly.
Margaret did not answer.
I looked at him.
His father, Thomas, had died when Daniel was nineteen.
Margaret rarely spoke about him except to say he had abandoned the family emotionally before his death.
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"Did you do this to Dad too?"
Margaret's breathing changed on the phone.
"Do not compare your father to this woman."
"Did you record him?"
"Daniel."
"Did you tell people he was unstable?"
Margaret hung up.
Daniel stared at the phone in his hand.
"What was that?"
I did not know.
But I knew the question had frightened her more than the security footage had.
A minute later, Daniel's phone buzzed.
It was a message from his uncle Peter.
CALL ME BEFORE YOU BELIEVE ANYTHING YOUR MOTHER SAYS ABOUT YOUR FATHER.
Daniel showed it to me.
"Why would Uncle Peter send this now?"
I looked toward the dark front window.
Across the street, headlights switched off.
A car had parked facing our house.
Daniel's phone buzzed again.
May you like
Peter sent one more line.
SHE KNOWS I KEPT THE BOX.
