Chapter 2 - THE MISSING FOOTAGE
“Give me the phone.”
Ryan took one step toward me.
I tightened my arms around Lily.
“No.”
“Emma, you’re upset.”
“Your mother just hit our daughter.”
“I saw.”
The words landed strangely.
Not I just saw.
I saw.
Diane snapped, “He means now.”
I looked at Ryan.
“Do you?”
His silence answered.
I took Lily upstairs.
Ryan followed until I turned at the staircase.
“If you come closer, I’m calling the police.”
Diane laughed from the living room.
“Over a slap?”
I looked down at her.
“No. Over whatever both of you are trying to delete.”
That shut her up.
I called my sister, Rachel, and asked her to come immediately. Then I contacted Lily’s pediatrician, described the red mark and what I had witnessed, and followed the instructions I was given.
I photographed Lily’s cheek.
Then I noticed something else.
A faint yellowing bruise near her upper arm.
Older.
My stomach dropped.
I rolled up her sleeve.
Two smaller marks.
Finger-shaped.
“Lily.”
Her eyes filled.
“Grandma?”
She buried her face in my shoulder.
That reaction was enough to make me stop asking questions.
I wasn’t going to interrogate a baby.
Rachel arrived twenty minutes later.
She took one look at Lily and whispered, “Oh my God.”
Downstairs, Ryan paced.
Diane had recovered her handbag.
Her phone was no longer inside it.
“Where is the phone?” I asked.
Diane smiled.
“My property.”
Ryan wouldn’t look at me.
I went to the security panel.
We had installed four interior cameras after a break-in scare the previous year.
The living-room camera covered the sofa.
The hallway camera covered the staircase.
A nursery camera watched Lily’s crib.
And one kitchen camera covered the back entrance.
I opened the archive.
Today’s footage existed.
Except for one block.
1:08 p.m. to 1:31 p.m.
Deleted.
I checked the event log.
Administrator deletion.
User:
R.PARKER.
Ryan.
I turned slowly.
“Why did you erase twenty-three minutes?”
“I didn’t.”
The answer came too fast.
“The system says you did.”
“Passwords get saved.”
“On what?”
He rubbed his face.
“Emma…”
“On what?”
Diane walked toward us.
“This family is not going to be destroyed because you’re hysterical.”
I looked at her.
“Hysterical?”
Ryan’s shoulders dropped.
He knew she had made it worse.
I searched the cloud backup.
The main footage was deleted.
But motion thumbnails remained.
Tiny still images.
One showed Lily near the sofa.
Another showed Diane standing over her.
The third showed Ryan in the doorway.
Watching.
Time stamp:
1:17 p.m.
Forty-three minutes before I came home.
I enlarged it.
Diane’s right hand was raised.
Lily’s arms were over her head.
Ryan stood ten feet away.
He wasn’t moving toward them.
He was holding his phone.
Recording.
My throat closed.
“What happened at 1:17?”
Ryan whispered:
“Nothing.”
Then Rachel, standing behind me, said:
“If nothing happened, why were you filming it?”
Ryan looked at her.
That was when I saw fear.
Not fear of losing me.
May you like
Fear of what the video contained.
📖 Ryan had recorded the first incident instead of stopping it, but his reason for filming would lead me to an even worse question: who was the video actually meant for? 👇
