Nathan paused the video.
Rachel stared at the screen as though she had spent the last hour being told by her own fear that what happened was somehow too messy to prove, only to see the night hand the truth back to her with a timestamp.
“I thought nobody saw him,” she whispered.
Nathan looked toward the window across the street where a curtain had moved earlier.
“Maybe nobody came outside,” he said.
“That doesn’t mean nobody saw.”
Rachel folded her arms tightly around Emma.
“He said it was his business too.
That he had a right to come in because Emma lives here.”
Nathan’s expression hardened, but his voice stayed level.
“A broken door doesn’t look like permission.”
Rachel gave him a tired look.
“You sound like a lawyer.”
“I’m not.”
“What are you?”
Nathan hesitated.
The question almost made him laugh after the day he had survived.
“I run a company.”
Rachel glanced through the kitchen window at the immaculate house next door.
“A big one?”
“Big enough that people install too many cameras around my house.”
For the first time, Rachel actually smiled.
It lasted less than a second, but Emma noticed.
“Mommy smiled.”
Rachel’s face crumpled slightly.
She hugged her daughter closer.
Nathan looked back at the footage.
“The recording is automatically backed up.
If you want a copy, I can export it.”
Rachel’s smile vanished.
She knew what that meant.
A copy meant admitting something had happened.
A copy meant telling someone.
A copy meant the night would no longer belong only to the three people who had been inside the house.
Her phone vibrated again on the counter.
She stared at it.
This time she turned it over.
A message waited on the screen.
Nathan could not read it from where he sat, and he did not try.
Rachel did.
Her face changed.
Emma noticed that too.
“Is Daddy mad?”
Rachel locked the phone.
“He says I made this harder than it needed to be.”
Nathan waited.
Rachel looked at the broken frame, then at the frozen image on his computer.
“He always says things like that,” she whispered.
“Like whatever he does is something I made him do.”
Nathan pushed the laptop slightly toward her.
“This part is your decision.”
Rachel frowned.
“What part?”
“Whether you call the police.
Whether you give them the video.
Whether you show them the message.
