Behind them was a small black device.
A camera.
I had never installed it.
I removed it carefully.
Natalie had followed me upstairs.
The moment she saw it, every trace of confidence vanished from her face.
I called the police.
Natalie left before they arrived.
She took nothing except her purse.
The officers searched the house.
They found another camera in the basement utility room.
One in my study.
And one tucked inside an old smoke detector near the stairs.
Someone had been recording my family for months.
Detective Owen Marsh asked me if Natalie had installed them.
“I don’t know.”
“Did your late wife ever use interior cameras?”
“Years ago.”
“Could any of these be hers?”
“I don’t think so.”
One of the officers called from my office.
He had removed the bottom drawer of my desk.
Taped behind it was an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
The handwriting made my knees weak.
Laura.
I knew every curve of it.
Every letter.
I had seen it on birthday cards, school forms, grocery lists and hundreds of notes left beside the coffee machine.
The envelope had been hidden in my house by my dead wife.
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
The date was twelve days before she died.
Ethan,
If you ever find this, it means I waited too long to tell you something.
I stopped reading.
Detective Marsh stood several feet away, giving me privacy.
I continued.
There is someone close enough to us to know our routines, and I think she has been watching Sophie.
Her name is Natalie.
My vision blurred.
Laura knew Natalie.
Not casually.
Not the way Natalie had described.
The letter continued.
Natalie and I have known each other much longer than you realize. I never told you because I was ashamed of how complicated our history became.
I believed distance had changed her.
I was wrong.
She has asked questions about you that no friend should ask.
She watches Sophie in a way that frightens me.
And twice now, I have found her in parts of our house where she had no reason to be.
Please believe me if I am not here to explain.
Most of all, do not let her convince Sophie that losing me was Sophie's fault.
I dropped the letter.
That sentence crushed me.
Sophie had told me exactly what Natalie said.
Mommy died because you came.
Laura had predicted it.
Which meant the cruelty had not begun after our marriage.
Something had been happening much longer.
Detective Marsh examined the cameras.
“The devices are older than your marriage,” he said the next morning.