Chapter 5 - The Missing Clip
The moment we got home that evening, I went straight to my office and pulled up the security system on my desktop.
The backyard camera timeline had a clean, empty hole right where the whole incident should have been.
2:14 to 2:26.
Gone.
Claire stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. “You really think I deleted it?”
I didn’t take my eyes off the screen. “Did you?”
She gave a helpless laugh. “I don’t even know how.”
“That’s interesting,” I said, clicking through settings. “Because the app log shows a manual user action from inside the house.”
She went very still.
Then she recovered. “Maybe you did it by accident.”
I looked at her.
That actually made her angry.
“You’ve been looking for a reason not to marry me ever since Emma started acting weird.”
“Don’t you dare put this on her.”
“Oh, please. She hates me.”
“She’s afraid of you.”
Claire’s mouth hardened. “Same difference.”
The sound of that sent a fresh wave of disgust through me.
Rosa, our housekeeper, hovered uncertainly in the hall. She had worked for my family for eleven years and had practically watched Emma grow up.
“Mr. Mercer?” she said carefully.
I turned. “Yes?”
Her eyes flicked to Claire, then back to me. “Before lunch… I heard Emma crying in the pantry.”
Claire snapped around. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
Rosa flinched. “Because you said she was throwing a tantrum. You said not to interfere.”
A long silence followed.
Rosa wrung her hands. “I did not like it.”
Claire took a step toward her. “So now you’re piling on too?”
“Enough,” I said.
I clicked deeper into the system settings and found something I had forgotten even existed.
Cloud backup sync.
My older home server mirrored deleted clips every six hours.
If the backup had gone through before Claire erased the footage, I might still have it.
I hit restore.
A progress bar appeared.
Twenty-two percent.
Claire saw it from across the room.
“What is that?”
I leaned back in my chair. “Insurance.”
Her face drained of color.
For the first time all day, she looked scared.
Then my screen flashed red.
Remote deletion attempt detected.
I killed the connection, unplugged the server, and restored the clip manually from local storage. When the video finally loaded, it showed everything. Emma crying on the patio. Claire grabbing her arm. Claire shoving her into the playhouse. Claire snapping the padlock shut and glancing toward the house before walking away.
I watched the footage twice. By the second time, my hands were numb.
Claire appeared behind me, maybe because she realized there was no point hiding anymore.
“She was hysterical,” she said. “You didn’t hear the things she said.”
I stood up slowly.
“You put a lock on a child.”
“She needed consequences.”
“She needed safety.”
“She needed boundaries!” Claire shouted. “Every room in this house revolves around that little girl and her dead mother. Every conversation. Every holiday. Every damn breath.”
The wedding died in that instant.
“The wedding is off,” I said.
Claire stared at me. “No.”
“Yes.”
She laughed once, sharp and ugly. “So she wins?”
“This is not a game.”
“It has always been a game,” Claire said. “You just never noticed because she learned to cry at exactly the right time.”
I pointed toward the hall. “Pack a bag.”
May you like
She didn’t move.
Instead, she smiled without warmth. “You still don’t know what your daughter does when you’re not looking,” she said.
