Chapter 1 - The Camera
“Dad... look at the camera above the stairs.”
Seven-year-old Mason said it while his mother lay curled on the landing, one arm around her eight-month belly.
Michael looked up. A tiny red light blinked over the staircase.
Recording.
Sophia stopped crying.
Three minutes earlier, Emily had been walking down the stairs with one hand on the rail when Sophia came up behind her.
“You should’ve taken my advice,” Sophia said.
Emily glanced back. “What advice?”
“To leave before Michael came home.”
“I’m not doing this with you.”
Emily turned forward.
Sophia grabbed her arm and shoved.
Emily missed the rail. Her shoulder hit one step, then another, and she crashed onto the lower landing with a scream.
“My baby...”
Sophia stood above her. She didn’t rush down. She didn’t call for help.
Then the front door opened.
Michael had come home early from the airport.
Sophia dropped to the floor, grabbed her own shoulder, and screamed, “MICHAEL! SHE PUSHED ME!”
Michael saw his sister crying. Then he saw Emily struggling to rise.
He didn’t ask a single question.
He crossed the foyer and slapped his pregnant wife.
The sound seemed louder than the fall.
Emily stared at him, one hand over her cheek, the other over the child inside her.
“You hit me,” she whispered. “You didn’t even ask what happened.”
Behind him, Sophia smiled.
Small. Cruel. Certain she had won.
Then Mason appeared halfway down the stairs.
“Dad...”
His little hand shook as he pointed upward.
Michael followed his finger to the blinking light.
Sophia went white.
Then Emily gasped.
A dark stain spread across the bottom of her dress.
“Mom?” Mason started crying.
Michael dropped beside Emily. “Emily, let me help you.”
She pulled away. “Don’t touch me.”
Mason’s voice broke. “Aunt Sophia pushed her. I saw it.”
Silence swallowed the foyer.
Sophia backed toward the hall.
Michael grabbed his phone and called 911.
But Sophia wasn’t looking at Emily anymore. She was staring at the camera.
Michael noticed.
“What else is on that camera?”
Sophia said nothing.
Mason wiped his face with his sleeve. “She came here last night too.”
Michael froze. Sophia had claimed she was in Boston.
“She was in your office,” Mason continued. “She was looking for the red folder Mom hid.”
“Mason, stop,” Sophia whispered.
He didn’t.
“She said if she found it before Dad came home, everything would be okay.”
Emily opened her eyes.
Because Mason wasn’t supposed to know where she had hidden that folder.
And Sophia wasn’t supposed to know the folder existed.
Michael looked from his sister to his injured wife.
“What’s in the red folder?”
May you like
Emily stared at Sophia.
“The reason she tried to make sure I never got downstairs.”
