Chapter 2

The high-risk OB floor in Atlanta smelled like antiseptic and hot blankets. They hooked me to a fetal monitor and told me I was having contractions. They gave me medication to stop them. They told me I was thirty weeks and three days, and that if the baby came now, he would need a NICU, and that I needed to lie still and let them work.

I lay still.

I did not let go of my phone.

Caleb had not come with me. He was in Cade’s Crossing, with the sheriff, with Deborah, with Rae. I learned later that he gave a statement that night. He said he had walked into the arrangement room and found his sister crouched over his wife with red hands. He said Rae had been off since Howard died. He said things had been strange at home.

I did not know any of that yet. At 8:55, I knew only that the camera had been running, and that Deborah controlled the account.

My hands were shaking so hard I had to steady the phone against the rail of the bed. I opened the Whitfield & Sons camera app. I had installed it. I had set up the cloud storage. Deborah had changed the admin password three weeks after Howard’s funeral, but my old login still worked then, probably because she had never thought I would use it from a hospital bed.

The app loaded slow. I watched the little wheel turn and prayed.

Then the clips came up.

October 24. Arrangement room. There was a thumbnail for 7:16 PM.

I pressed it.

The video opened without sound at first, then sound came rushing in. The room was exactly as I remembered: floral wallpaper, dark wainscot, the long walnut table. I was standing at the table with my phone. Deborah came in. I saw her mouth move. I saw her step forward. I saw her hands hit my shoulders.

I saw myself fall.

I saw the table go over.

I watched eleven seconds of continuous footage showing Deborah standing over me with the table toppled beside my body, her black dress sharp against the pale carpet. She was not calling 911. She was looking at the door.

Then the app logged me out.

I stared at the screen. My login failed. My password was wrong. I tried again. Wrong. The account had been changed, or my permissions had been cut. I felt the floor of my life drop out from under me.

But one thing had saved before the screen went black. In my camera roll, there was a still frame I didn’t remember taking. Timestamp 7:17:12 PM. I had hit save in the last second, before the app kicked me out.

I opened it.

Deborah stood over me on the rug. The walnut display table was toppled beside my body. My gray dress was dark down the left side. My face was turned toward the camera, eyes open, one hand under my belly.

It was not proof of the shove. Not exactly. It showed her standing over me, not touching me. It showed the aftermath. But it showed her there, in the room, before Rae, before Caleb, before any of the story Deborah would tell.

At 9:02, my phone buzzed with a text from Deborah.

“I’ve taken care of the office.”

I called the cloud help line. A polite man in a headset told me the account administrator had deleted the clips and changed the recovery settings. He could not tell me more. I was not the administrator.

I lay back against the pillow and pressed my hand over my belly. The baby rolled under my palm, small and stubborn. I closed my eyes and saw Rae’s face going white, her eyes climbing to the camera. She had known the clips were there. She had also known Deborah would erase them.

I saved the still frame to three places: my phone, my email, and a text to myself. Then I deleted the text thread so Deborah would not see it if she got my phone. I did not know yet that she would try.

At 10:20, Caleb finally called. His voice was raw. “They’re saying Rae hurt you.”

“Your mother pushed me,” I said.

There was a long silence. In the background, I heard Deborah’s voice, soft and measured, asking him to bring her some water.

“Laney,” he said. “You’re on medication.”

“I know what I saw.”

“I saw Rae over you with blood on her hands.”

“Because your mother put them there.”

He hung up without saying goodbye.

I lay in the dark with the fetal monitor thumping, and I understood two things at once. The camera had recorded everything. And Deborah had already deleted it.

But I had one frame.