Chapter 3 - The Camera Above the Christmas Tree
For the next ten seconds, nobody moved.
Then James became Captain Walker.
Not my exhausted husband.
Not Emma's gentle father.
The officer.
“Claire, give me the phone.”
I handed it over.
“Dad, lock every exterior door. Margaret, don't touch anything in the dining room.”
Mom stared at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Preserving evidence.”
He called the police.
Despite the message.
Especially because of the message.
Two patrol cars arrived eleven minutes later.
Lauren's apartment was thirty-five minutes away, and another unit was dispatched there.
Emma and I stayed upstairs while paramedics examined her.
Thankfully, the redness on her cheek was already fading.
No serious injury.
Those words should have relieved me.
Instead, I cried.
Because “no serious injury” still meant my six-month-old had needed a paramedic at Christmas.
James sat beside me afterward.
“I should've stopped her.”
“You couldn't have known.”
“I saw Lauren getting angry.”
“So did I.”
He looked at Emma sleeping in my arms.
“I've spent my entire career thinking I know how to recognize danger.”
I touched his hand.
“You came home from deployment three days ago, James. You were eating Christmas dinner with your family. You're allowed to believe people won't attack babies at dinner.”
His jaw tightened.
A detective knocked.
Detective Rachel Torres was in her forties, with tired eyes and a voice that immediately made me trust her.
“We found the camera.”
It had been hidden inside a decorative angel positioned on a shelf facing the dining table.
Lauren had brought the angel earlier that week as a “Christmas gift” for Mom.
The detective placed it inside an evidence bag.
“Who had access to the house?”
“Family,” Dad said.
“And Eric,” Mom whispered.
The detective looked at her.
“Eric Dawson?”
Mom nodded.
“He helped Lauren deliver gifts yesterday.”
Torres wrote something down.
Then her phone rang.
She listened.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
I stood.
She ended the call.
“Officers reached Mr. Dawson's apartment.”
“And Lauren?”
“She wasn't there.”
My stomach dropped.
“Was Eric?”
“No.”
“Then where are they?”
“We don't know yet.”
James stepped forward.
“Signs of struggle?”
“Some.”
She looked at me.
“There was blood.”
I stopped breathing.
“But not much,” Torres added quickly. “We don't know whose.”
Mom began sobbing.
I couldn't comfort her.
Not yet.
Maybe that made me cruel.
But every time I looked at her, I saw twenty-eight years of lies.
Detective Torres asked for the trust documents.
Dad admitted they had disappeared.
“Who removed them?”
Nobody knew.
Except James had noticed something.
“Margaret left the dining room after Lauren.”
Mom stared at him.
“For two minutes.”
“Where did you go?”
“To the bathroom.”
“Which bathroom?”
She pointed down the hall.
James looked at Dad.
Dad slowly shook his head.
“What?” I asked.
“That bathroom has been broken since yesterday.”
Mom's face went white.
I felt another piece of myself crack.
“Where did you go?”
She began crying harder.
“Claire—”
“Where?”
“To the study.”
“Why?”
“To get the envelope.”
Dad stared at her.
“You gave it to Lauren?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Mom closed her eyes.
“Eric.”
The room exploded.
Dad shouted.
I shouted.
Even Detective Torres raised her voice.
James didn't.
He simply asked, “When?”
“Before dinner.”
Mom collapsed into a chair.
“Eric told me the papers would protect Lauren. He said Evelyn's trust had been written unfairly and that Claire could fix everything with one signature.”
“You stole legal documents addressed to me?”
“I thought—”
“You didn't think!”
I was shaking.
“You chose Lauren. Again.”
“She is my daughter!”
The words struck me harder than Lauren's hand had struck Emma.
Mom realized it immediately.
Her mouth opened.
I nodded slowly.
“There it is.”
“Claire, that's not what I meant.”
“Yes, it is.”
I looked at Dad.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
For once, I believed him.
James's phone buzzed.
He looked down.
Then at Detective Torres.
“I think you need to see this.”
A security alert from our home camera.
Someone was at our house.
Our home was forty minutes away.
James opened the feed.
A hooded figure stood at our back door.
Trying the handle.
Then the figure moved toward a side window.
Torres immediately radioed another unit.
We watched helplessly as the person disappeared from camera view.
Thirty seconds later the feed went black.
James called our neighbor, retired firefighter Frank Mercer.
No answer.
Then another camera came online.
Our doorbell camera.
A face appeared.
Eric Dawson.
He stared directly into the lens.
Then smiled.
“James,” he said.
My skin crawled.
“He knows we're watching,” I whispered.
Eric leaned closer.
“I need something that belongs to your wife.”
James didn't respond.
It was recorded video, not live communication.
Eric continued.
“Evelyn Bennett kept records. Claire has them, whether she knows it or not.”
He raised something toward the camera.
A photograph.
An old photograph of Grandma Evelyn standing beside a young woman.
The woman looked exactly like me.
Rebecca.
My mother.
On the back, written in blue ink, were three words.
CEDAR HOUSE. FLOORBOARD.
Eric lowered the photograph.
“Ask Margaret what that means.”
Then he walked away.
The camera died again.
Detective Torres immediately ordered officers to secure our property.
Dad looked at Mom.
“What is Cedar House?”
She didn't answer.
I already knew.
“The lake property.”
Dad turned toward me.
I nodded.
Grandma had called it Cedar House.
Mom began shaking.
James noticed.
“You know what he's looking for.”
She whispered, “I thought Evelyn destroyed it.”
“Destroyed what?”
“The ledger.”
Dad stared at her.
“What ledger?”
Mom stood abruptly.
“We need to get to Cedar House before Eric does.”
Torres stopped her.
“Nobody is going anywhere.”
“You don't understand.”
“Then explain.”
Mom looked at me.
For the first time that night, she seemed genuinely afraid for me.
“Your mother's death wasn't an accident.”
My heart stopped.
Dad whispered, “Margaret.”
She continued anyway.
“Rebecca discovered someone had been stealing from Evelyn's company.”
“Who?”
Mom looked toward the photograph of Grandma.
“Victor Hale.”
Eric's former boss.
“And she kept proof,” Mom continued. “Names. Transfers. Dates. Everything.”
“The ledger,” James said.
Mom nodded.
“Rebecca hid it.”
“At Cedar House?”
“Yes.”
I felt cold all over.
“Then why did she die?”
Mom stared at me.
“Because Victor found out she knew.”
Silence filled the room.
Then Dad asked, “How do you know this?”
Mom looked at him.
And I saw something in my father's face that terrified me.
He didn't know.
After thirty-three years of marriage, he didn't know this secret either.
May you like
Mom's next words destroyed whatever remained of Christmas.
“Because I was in the car with Rebecca the night she died.”
