Chapter 5
My dad's thumb hovered over his phone screen and then he pressed play. I didn't watch him at first. I watched her.
She was still holding onto the edge of the dining table like it could keep her in place. Her cream blouse had gone a little crooked at the collar and she didn't fix it. She was breathing through her mouth, slow and loud enough that I could hear it over the hum of the house.
The bedroom camera loaded a second slower than the laundry room one had. The timestamp in the corner said yesterday, 4:17 p.m. My room looked the way it always did on camera, a little brighter than it felt in real life. My bed was made. My bunny's smaller twin, the one with the chewed ear, was supposed to be on my pillow. It wasn't.
On the screen, the door opened. She came in without knocking. She wasn't carrying laundry or toys or anything to clean with. She just stood in the middle of my room and looked around like she was deciding where to start.
My dad leaned in. I felt his sleeve brush my shoulder. He hadn't told me to move closer but I did anyway, my bunny pressed so hard against my chest its pink nose left a dent in my shirt.
On the video, she went straight to my bed. She picked up my pillow and shook it. Then she pulled the blanket off and tossed it on the floor. She knelt and reached under the bed and pulled out the plastic bin where I kept my picture books and my bunnies. She tipped it. The books fanned out, a couple of them bending at the spine where they hit the hardwood.
"Daddy, look," I whispered. I didn't mean to say it out loud but it came out.
She wasn't looking at the mess like someone who was cleaning. Her mouth was tight. She stood up and went to my dresser. She opened the second drawer, the one with my soft clothes, and started pulling things out fast. Not folding. She tossed shirts and little socks over her shoulder. One of my white tops with the jeweled neckline, like the one I was wearing at dinner, she held up for half a second and then dropped.
My dad's jaw shifted. I saw the muscle jump near his ear.
On the screen she picked up the small bunny from where it had fallen near the bin. She stared at it, turned it over in her hand, and then carried it to my closet. She opened the door and I couldn't see inside from that camera angle, but her arm went up high like she was pushing something onto a shelf I couldn't reach. When she stepped back her hands were empty.
She closed the closet. Then she walked back to my bedroom door, paused, and clicked the lock from the outside. The little hallway lock that was supposed to be for privacy, the silver slider. She slid it shut and gave the handle a tug to check it.
The timestamp kept running. 4:19. 4:20. The room was empty but the door stayed closed. The camera had no sound, but I remembered the sound. The click. The quiet after.
My dad's hand tightened around his phone. "You locked her in," he said. It wasn't a question.
Her voice came fast. "I was organizing. She destroys her room, I was trying to clean it before dinner. I put things up high so she wouldn't make a mess again. I didn't lock it, I just pulled it shut, the lock must have caught."
The video was still playing. The way she had thrown the clothes didn't look like organizing. The way she had hidden the bunny on the high shelf didn't look like cleaning. My dad rewound with his thumb and played the closet part again, the lift of her arm, the empty hands coming back.
"You tossed her clothes on the floor," he said, quieter this time. "That's not organizing."
"I was in a hurry," she said. She crossed her arms and then uncrossed them. "You don't see what it's like when you're at work. She leaves everything everywhere. I was trying to keep the house nice. For you."
He didn't look at her. He looked at my room on his screen, at the door that stayed locked for six minutes straight before the timestamp jumped and the door finally opened again. In that next cut, I came out, my face red, my arms empty. I went straight to the closet on tiptoes and couldn't reach.
I remembered standing there. I remembered not crying loud because I thought if I was loud she'd come back.
My dad finally turned his head toward her. His face had gone very still, the way it does when he's trying not to scare me but is already scared himself.
"You put her in the laundry room this afternoon," he said. "You locked her bedroom yesterday. Same thing. You put her in a small room and shut the door and kept the house looking perfect out here." He gestured with his phone toward the dining table behind us, the white plates with gold rims, the wine glasses we weren't supposed to touch, all of it set so neatly.
She shook her head. "That's not a pattern, it's two different days, it's not—"
"It is a pattern," he said, cutting her off, but not raising his voice. He sounded tired suddenly. "You made sure the dining room looked right while she was behind a closed door."
I held my bunny tighter and stared at the phone. The small bunny was still hidden on that shelf in the video. I knew exactly where. I had not told him that part yet. I hadn't needed to. The camera had shown him.
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He saved the clip. I watched his thumb hit the little box with the arrow, then he sent it to himself, then to his cloud. The screen said Saved. He did it a second time for the laundry room video, just to be sure. His hand was shaking a little and he steadied it against the table.
She watched him save it and her mouth opened like she wanted to say something else about cleaning, but nothing came out that fit what we had just seen.
