Chapter 7: The Morning Call
I woke up before my alarm clock did. The nightlight was still on and my bunny was still against my chest, warm from where I'd held him all night. Downstairs I could hear the quiet click of the laptop keys.
My name is Ellie, I was four that winter, and that morning my dad was already awake when I wasn't supposed to be.
I slipped out of bed and stood at the top of the stairs in my white dress that I'd fallen asleep in. The house smelled like coffee. Dad was at the kitchen table with his laptop open, the morning light coming gray through the beige curtains. He hadn't changed his shirt from last night, his dark navy button-up still untucked, his hair messy the way it got when he didn't sleep. On the screen I saw the laundry room, frozen on a time stamp in the corner that said 6:42 PM.
He didn't see me at first. He had his phone next to a little black USB stick. He clicked something and a bar started to fill on the screen. He whispered to himself, "Come on," while it loaded. I watched the words pop up: Saving to Cloud - 100% Complete. Then he dragged the same file onto the USB icon. He pulled the stick out, held it for a second, and slipped it into his shirt pocket and zipped it closed with his hand.
He rubbed his eyes and picked up his phone. He dialed and I heard it ring twice on speaker before a woman answered.
"Mara? It's me," he said, his voice low. "Did I wake you?"
His sister. I'd met her at Thanksgiving. She had the same brown hair.
"No, you're not on speaker, Ellie's still asleep," he said. He kept glancing at the stairs. I stepped back a little so he wouldn't see me. "Last night Vanessa took Ellie into the laundry room and shut the door. Ellie was crying for a long time and Vanessa said it didn't happen. But I have it on camera now. I saved it. I don't know what to do next."
I heard his sister's voice, small through the phone. "Do you have the whole night saved? Not just the clip?"
"Yeah, the whole cloud backup from yesterday. Time stamped. I put it on a USB too."
"Good. Don't delete anything, don't edit it," she said. "And don't let Vanessa talk you out of what you saw. Call her pediatrician today, just to ask what they recommend for documenting. You don't have to have all the answers this morning."
Dad nodded even though she couldn't see him. "Okay. I will. Thank you."
When he hung up he didn't put the phone down. He looked up the clinic number on the fridge where Mom used to stick it with a magnet and dialed again. This time a recording answered, then a nurse.
"Hi, this is a nurse line question, not an emergency," he said. "My four-year-old daughter was shut in a room as punishment last night, she was very distressed, and I have video of it. There's no bruise or anything like that, but she was shaking and crying and didn't sleep well. What should I document? Should I bring her in?"
The nurse's voice was calm and even. "Bring her in today if you can, sir, just for reassurance and to have a note on file. Keep the video saved with the date and time, bring any notes about what she said in her own words. And keep her routine as normal as you can."
He wrote that down on the back of an envelope. Bring her in today. Keep video. Her own words.
That's when the stairs creaked behind me. Vanessa came up from the living room. She was still in her cream blouse from last night, her dark hair pulled back now, and she was holding her phone. She'd heard everything.
"You recorded inside the house?" she said, not loud, but sharp. She looked at his laptop, still open to the laundry room. "You know you can't do that. That's our house. You didn't tell me there was a camera in there."
Dad closed the laptop halfway. "It's the laundry room camera I put up when the washer leaked. You knew it was there."
"I didn't know you were saving it to scare me," she said. She crossed her arms. "If you try to use that against me, I'll leave and I'll tell people you harassed me. I'll tell them you watched me in my own home and made up a story about me with your kid to control me. Do you think anyone will believe you over that?"
His hand went to his pocket where the USB was. He didn't raise his voice.
"I'm not trying to scare you," he said, after a pause. He breathed in slowly. "I'm trying to keep Ellie safe. I saved what happened because she asked me to check. My sister and the nurse both said to document it and bring her to the doctor. That's what I'm going to do."
Vanessa stared at him, then at the stairs where I was standing. I hadn't moved. My bunny's pink ribbon was twisted around my fingers so tight it hurt.
She saw me and her face changed, quick, like she was going to smile.
"Ellie, honey, you had a bad dream, remember?" she said.
I shook my head. I didn't say anything. I just held my bunny tighter.
Dad stood up and came to the bottom of the stairs. He didn't touch Vanessa. He held his hand out to me.
"Come on down, sweet pea," he said to me, soft. "You don't have to answer that. We're going to get breakfast and go see the doctor, just you and me, okay?"
May you like
I walked down step by step and took his hand. His hand was cold. Vanessa didn't move from the kitchen doorway. She watched us with her phone still in her hand, and I could hear her breathing, fast and shallow.
We didn't leave yet, but the video was safe in his pocket and on the cloud, and for the first time that morning I believed he would really take me with him.
