Fool Me Once

The camera had turned itself on again, but the view was completely blocked. But how…? Maya guessed that she was staring at Isabella’s back. Isabella was standing directly in front of the picture frame and that was the reason Maya couldn’t see anything.

No.

Isabella was too short. Her head might block it. But her back? No way. Plus, Maya could now make out color. Isabella had been wearing a red blouse yesterday. This shirt was green.

Forest green.

“Mommy?”

“One second, honey.”

Whoever it was moved away from the picture frame and out of view. Now Maya could get a look at the couch. Lily sat on it alone. She held that very book in her hands, paging through it on her own, pretending to read it.

Maya waited.

From the left-the kitchen-someone stepped into view. Not Isabella.

It was a man.

At least it appeared to be a man. He was still standing close to the camera and at an angle that made it impossible to see his face. For a moment Maya figured that it might have been Hector, coming inside for a break maybe, grabbing a glass of water or something, but Hector had been wearing overalls and a sweatshirt. This guy was wearing blue jeans and a green-

– forest green-

shirt…

On the screen, Lily looked up from the couch toward the maybe-man. When she smiled widely at him, Maya felt a rock take form in her chest. Lily wasn’t good with strangers. So whoever this was, whoever was wearing that familiar forest green shirt…

The man started toward the couch. His back was to the camera now, blocking Maya’s view of her daughter. Maya felt panic when her daughter was out of sight, actually leaning to the left and right as though she could see around this man and make sure that her daughter was still there, on the couch, safe with that same Dr. Seuss book. It felt as though her daughter was in danger and that danger would last until, at the very least, Maya could once again see her and keep an eye on her. The danger was, of course, nonsense. Maya knew that. She was watching something that had already happened, not a live feed, and her daughter was sitting next to her, healthy and seemingly happy, or at least she had been happy until her mom had gone silent and started staring at the computer screen.

“Mommy?”

“One second, honey, okay?”

The man in the familiar blue jeans and forest green shirt-that was how he’d always described the shirt, not green or dark green or bright green but forest green-had obviously not harmed or snatched her daughter or anything like that, so the anxiety Maya was now experiencing seemed uncalled for and more than overblown.

On the screen, the man moved to the side.

Maya could see Lily again. She figured that the fear would subside now. But that wasn’t what happened. The man turned and sat on the couch right next to Lily. He faced the camera and smiled.

Somehow Maya didn’t scream.

Flex, relax, flex…

Maya, always cool in battle, always managing to find someplace inside of her that made her pulse stay even and kept the adrenaline spikes from paralyzing her, tried to find that place now. The familiar clothes, the blue jeans, and especially the forest green shirt should have set her up for the possibility-and by “possibility,” she meant “impossibility”-of what she was now seeing. So she didn’t scream out loud. She didn’t gasp.

There was instead a steady spreading across her chest that made it hard to breathe. There was a chilling in her veins. There was a small quiver in her lips.

There, on the computer monitor, Maya watched Lily crawl onto the lap of her dead husband.

Chapter 6

The video didn’t last long.

Lily was barely on “Joe’s” lap when he stood with her and carried her out of camera range. The recording stopped thirty seconds later when the motion detector turned the nanny cam off.

That was it.

The next time the cam was activated, Isabella and Lily entered from the kitchen and started to play, just as they had many times before. Maya fast-forwarded it ahead, but the rest of the day was pretty much the same as every other. Isabella and Lily. No dead husbands or anyone else.

She rewound and played the video a second time, then a third.

“Book!”

It was Lily, who was growing impatient. Maya turned to her daughter and wondered how to ask this. “Honey,” she said slowly, “did you see Daddy?”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Lily. Did you see Daddy?”

Lily looked suddenly sad. “Where Daddy?”

Maya didn’t want to upset her daughter, but then again, this was a pretty huge turn of events. How to play this? Maya saw no way around it. She put the video on one more time and showed it to Lily. Lily watched, entranced. When Joe came on, she squealed with delight: “Daddy!”

“Yes,” Maya said, pushing the pang away at her child’s enthusiasm. “Did you see Daddy?”

She pointed to the screen. “Daddy!”

“Yes, that’s Daddy. Was he here yesterday?”

Lily just stared at her.

“Yesterday,” Maya said. She got up and moved to the couch. She sat in the exact same spot “Joe”-she could only think of his name with air quotes-had. “Was Daddy here yesterday?”