Chapter 12 - THE CAMERA ABOVE LILY’S BED
I ran upstairs.
Lily was asleep exactly as she appeared in the video.
Pink party dress changed now for pajamas.
Stuffed rabbit under her arm.
Window closed.
Closet closed.
Nothing obvious.
Then I noticed a tiny black dot inside the smoke detector above her bed.
Richard stood beneath it.
“That isn’t ours.”
He pulled a chair over.
I stopped him.
“Don’t touch it yet.”
He looked at me.
“We need it out.”
“We need to know where it goes.”
Julian joined us.
Vanessa stood in the doorway.
Olivia stayed downstairs.
I photographed the device.
Then Richard carefully removed the smoke-detector cover.
A miniature camera sat inside.
Connected to the house Wi-Fi.
Vanessa whispered, “That’s been there for months.”
“How do you know?”
“I thought Mom installed security.”
Richard turned.
“Inside Lily’s bedroom?”
Vanessa looked sick.
“I didn’t think.”
I almost snapped.
Then stopped.
That phrase had become the Bennett family motto.
I didn’t think.
I didn’t know.
I assumed.
Meanwhile, Lily paid the price.
Richard checked the network settings.
The camera had an administrator account.
T_BENNETT.
Thomas.
But there was also a local installation record.
Someone physically connected it using a Bennett family phone.
Device identifier.
Vanessa checked.
Not hers.
Not Richard’s.
Olivia’s.
We all went downstairs.
Olivia stared at the installation log.
“I didn’t do that.”
“You used your phone.”
“Someone used my phone.”
“Who has access?”
“Everyone.”
“That isn’t helpful.”
She looked at Vanessa.
“Did you?”
“No.”
Richard?
“No.”
Then Olivia whispered, “Julian.”
Everyone turned.
Julian stared at her.
“What?”
“You used my phone tonight.”
“To call the caterer after Richard broke yours.”
“That was tonight.”
“The camera was installed four months ago.”
Olivia looked away.
Another dead end.
I checked the timestamp.
April 14.
Party at the Bennett house.
I remembered.
Olivia’s sixty-third birthday.
Dozens of guests.
Family.
Business associates.
And one temporary event planner Olivia had hired.
I found the invoice.
Sterling Events Coordination.
Julian frowned.
“That isn’t ours.”
The name was designed to sound connected to his family.
Contact:
A. Vale.
My pulse changed.
Adeline?
No.
Different surname.
I searched Vanessa’s messages.
One from Thomas six months earlier.
A.V. will handle installation.
So A.V. was working for Thomas.
Julian checked the event photographs.
Hundreds.
In the background of one image stood a woman carrying floral arrangements upstairs.
Dark hair.
Profile partly visible.
Richard zoomed in.
“She looks familiar.”
Vanessa whispered, “Adeline.”
But it wasn’t the woman from archive security.
Similar.
Older.
I looked at Olivia.
She froze.
“You know her too.”
“No.”
“Stop.”
Olivia covered her mouth.
Then whispered, “That’s Evelyn.”
The room stopped.
I laughed involuntarily.
Not amusement.
Shock.
“My mother died fifteen years ago.”
Olivia shook her head.
“That woman looks like her.”
“Looks like?”
Julian grabbed the photograph.
His hands started shaking.
He stared for several seconds.
Then sat down.
“That’s Evelyn.”
I felt the floor tilt.
“No.”
“I know my sister.”
“No.”
“She has the scar.”
He pointed to the woman’s wrist.
A small pale mark.
I knew that scar.
My mother had told me she burned herself on a stove when she was young.
The woman in the photo had the same mark.
I stared at the timestamp.
Four months ago.
My mother had supposedly died fifteen years earlier.
I had been at her hospital bedside.
I had watched nurses remove machines.
I had attended the cremation.
I carried her ashes.
“This is impossible.”
Olivia whispered, “Unless the woman who died wasn’t Evelyn.”
My stomach turned.
I remembered my mother’s final illness.
Cancer.
Weight loss.
Hair loss.
Morphine.
Her face had changed dramatically by the end.
Could someone have deceived me?
No.
She knew things only my mother knew.
Songs.
Stories.
My childhood.
Unless—
I looked at the security footage of Adeline.
My unknown sister.
A woman who resembled Vanessa because of Thomas.
Then at the photograph of Evelyn.
I couldn’t fit the pieces together.
Julian enlarged the event image.
The woman wore a badge.
A. VALE.
A.V.
Thomas’s installer.
Evelyn had apparently entered Olivia’s home four months ago under another name.
And installed a camera above Lily’s bed.
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If it was truly my mother, then every assumption I had about who was protecting me had just collapsed.
📖 Find out whether the woman posing as “A. Vale” was really my supposedly dead mother—and why Lily recognized her before any adult did in CHAPTER 13. 👇
