What the Vent Camera Revealed

I told myself I had to get the video in front of Daniel. Whatever poison Mia had poured into his ears, the recording would cut through it. He had to see her manufacture that accusation with his own eyes.

If I could show him Mia tearing at her blouse and arranging the lie, perhaps he would understand how badly he had been deceived. Perhaps he would finally turn against Arthur Vance and stop this theft before it swallowed all of us.

My cheek still throbbed where Daniel had struck me. His words on that porch had cut deeper than the blow. Even so, he was my son, and I could not abandon him to the consequences of Mia's cruelty.

The footage was in my email. All I needed was a way to reach it.

I had no telephone left to me. The library had already shut its doors for the evening, and there was nowhere else nearby where an old man could borrow a computer at that hour.

For a moment I stood at the kitchen island, unable to think past the cold dread pressing against my ribs. Then a memory surfaced from the old study at the end of the hall.

When Daniel had cleared out much of the house, he had taken the desktop computer and television. But he had overlooked something small.

Sarah's iPad.

I went down the shadowed hallway as quickly as my aching body allowed. The study smelled of dust, old paper, and the faint cedar scent Sarah had always loved.

Years earlier, I had bought that tablet for her crossword puzzles. When arthritis made it too painful for her to hold, we put it away in the desk and never gave it another thought.

I pulled open the bottom drawer of the oak desk. Under tax papers and yellowed envelopes, I found the iPad exactly where I remembered it.

Dust dulled the black screen, and the thing held no charge at all. Still, it was there, and that was enough to make hope stir again.

I searched through a box of old wires until I found a charging cord tangled among them. Then I connected the tablet to an outlet beside the baseboard and lowered myself onto the hard floor.

The minutes crawled. The screen stayed empty and black while I stared at it as though my need alone could wake it.

I silently begged Sarah's old device to give me one chance. I did not require much—only enough power to open my email and save my son from the trap closing around him.

At last, a pale Apple emblem glimmered against the darkness. I released a breath I had not realized I was holding.

The lock screen came up a little later. Sarah had never bothered with a passcode, so I slid my finger across the glass.

As the home screen appeared, the Wi-Fi symbol began looking for a connection. The router was still running in the basement; Daniel had not yet canceled the household service.

The iPad joined our home network almost immediately. I reached for the browser, meaning to go straight to my email.

Before I touched it, the tablet made a bright little chime.

A red badge appeared on the Messages application. Another followed, then several more, each one arriving with its own small sound in that silent room.

At first I could not understand why. I had never used Sarah's iPad to exchange messages.

Then I remembered last Christmas, when Mia had cracked her phone screen. She had borrowed this tablet for a few days and signed into her Apple ID so she could keep texting.

She must have left herself logged in. Now that the iPad had internet again, it was pulling down months of messages from her account.

My fingers went unsteady around the tablet. In the library footage, I had watched Mia type something just before she began pretending I had attacked her.

She had paused for an answer. Once it came, she smiled, put away her phone, and started her performance.

I had believed she was writing Arthur Vance, signaling that their plan was underway. But these newly synced messages might show precisely what she had said and who had answered.

That could be proof I could place in the police's hands. I opened Messages.

A long column of conversations filled the screen. The thread at the top was marked 2:14 PM, only minutes before Daniel forced me out of Willow Creek.

The name above it was not Arthur Vance. It said Hubby.

Daniel. My throat tightened as I opened the conversation, nearly losing my grip on the heavy iPad.

Mia's message, sent at 2:12, said she could not locate my phone in the junk room and that the camera hidden in the vent was still recording. She had been messaging my son all along.

Daniel answered thirty seconds later: “Do it anyway. We’re out of time. Vance is at the house waiting to complete the deed transfer.”

The room seemed to tilt beneath me. Tears blurred the screen as I read Mia's next warning: if I kept the video, I could expose her false assault and take it to the police.

Then Daniel's next message appeared. He said that when he hit me, he would make sure it left a mark so they could justify putting me on a psychiatric hold.