Chapter 3
He crouched in front of her. “Not the clinic. Your doctor. She’ll come here. Or we’ll go to her. Your choice.”
Lily searched his face, not for kindness, but for loopholes.
He hated Vivian for putting that search there.
Vivian folded her arms. “This is absurd. She has trained you to treat every inconvenience as trauma.”
Ethan did not look back. “Say one more word about her and you leave this house in police custody.”
Vivian laughed softly. “For what? A misunderstanding at dinner?”
Lily whispered, “There are videos.”
Ethan turned.
Vivian went still.
The hook widened.
“What videos?” Ethan asked.
Lily swallowed. “Kitchen camera.”
Ethan stood.
Vivian stepped forward too quickly. “There is no kitchen camera.”
Lily looked at her father, desperate now. “The old one. Mom had it put in when I was little because I kept sleepwalking and trying to make pancakes. It’s under the cabinet by the pantry. You forgot.”
Ethan had forgotten.
But Mara had not.
Memory opened in him with cruel clarity. Mara laughing at three in the morning, holding seven-year-old Lily away from the stove while Ethan disabled the burners. Lily furious in duck pajamas, insisting she was making French toast for the dog. Mara ordering a tiny interior camera the next day, not for security, but because motherhood had made her practical in ways Ethan only appreciated after she was gone.
Under the cabinet by the pantry.
Vivian looked toward it.
Too late.
Ethan followed her gaze.
There it was, half-hidden beneath the trim, its small black lens still facing the kitchen floor.
“Ethan,” Vivian said, voice changing. “That system hasn’t worked in years.”
“Then you won’t mind if I check.”
“You are not thinking clearly.”
He walked past her.
She moved to block him.
The action was small, but it answered another question.
Ethan stopped inches from her. “Move.”
For the first time since he had entered the kitchen, Vivian looked afraid of him. Not afraid he would hurt her. He had never been that kind of man, and she knew it. She was afraid of consequence. Of documentation. Of a world beyond charm.
“I made mistakes,” she said.
Lily let out a sound behind them, not quite a sob, not quite a laugh.
Mistakes.
Ethan heard the word and saw the bowl again. The food near Lily’s mouth. Her sleeve twisted in her fist. Her eyes when he came home.
“No,” he said. “You made choices.”
Vivian’s face twisted. “You left me alone with her.”
The sentence stunned him.
Vivian seemed to hear herself and rushed forward with it, as if momentum might make it defensible.
“You travel constantly. Chicago, Dallas, Miami. Emergency meetings, late dinners, calls from people who matter more than the life inside this house. And she looks at me like I’m trespassing. Every day. Every meal. Every hallway. I tried to be kind.”
Lily whispered, “You threw away Mom’s mug.”
Vivian turned on her. “It was chipped.”
“It was hers.”
“It was a mug.”
“It was hers.”
The repetition broke something in Ethan’s chest. Lily was not arguing about ceramic. She was defending proof that her mother had existed in rooms Vivian kept repainting.
Ethan stepped around Vivian.
She grabbed his sleeve.
He looked at her hand until she let go.
He opened the cabinet beneath the pantry counter and found the old recording unit exactly where Mara had installed it, hidden behind a basket of linen napkins. The napkins had never been used. Vivian liked them because they looked expensive and unsuitable for food.
The unit had a tiny red light.
Active.
Ethan removed it carefully.
Vivian’s face emptied.
Lily stood from the bench. The suit jacket slipped from one shoulder. “Dad?”
“I have it,” he said.
May you like
Vivian whispered, “You don’t know what’s on there.”
“No,” Ethan said. “But you do.”
