A Camera Facing the Fire
Chapter 07 - A Camera Facing the Fire
The backyard camera had been installed for a very ordinary reason: raccoons kept getting into June's compost bin, and Daniel had always liked experimenting with gadgets. After he died, I rarely checked the app. June reminded me it might have recorded the birthday party.
It had.
The footage showed the guests gathering, my careful walk toward the candles, and Sloan's deliberate-looking movement. It also showed what I hadn't noticed after the cake fell: Harrison reached for Sloan's arm as she whispered something into his ear. He nodded. Then, when I walked toward the fire pit, she seemed to say, "She'll do it."
The audio was faint. Marian told us not to invent certainty where the microphone couldn't provide it. But the timing mattered, especially when paired with another clip.
An hour before the party, the same camera showed Sloan and an unfamiliar man near the side gate. She handed him an envelope. He photographed the house with his phone. The man checked his watch and left before the guests arrived.
"An appraiser?" June suggested.
"Maybe," I said. "But why not tell me?"
Marian identified him from a public business directory as Travis Keene, a broker specializing in distressed residential properties. He was not listed as the property's owner or authorized agent.
I remembered Sloan's whispered promise: Next year you'll celebrate somewhere else.
What if that wasn't merely cruelty? What if someone expected me to be gone?
We asked Marian to contact the broker and preserve relevant communications. We didn't confront him ourselves.
That night I stood at the bathroom sink looking at my reflection. There were new lines around my mouth. Gray hair I'd stopped coloring two years earlier. A familiar face that someone wanted others to see as unreliable.
I thought about the day I retired from teaching. The orchestra had played a terrible arrangement of "What a Wonderful World," and students had lined the hallway holding handmade cards. Nobody there had questioned whether I could make decisions. I had conducted sixty nervous teenagers through a concert without losing my place once.
May you like
Then I sat on the edge of the bed and cried. Not because I feared getting older. I had earned every year. I cried because my family had begun using age as permission to erase me.
Before turning out the light, I put Daniel's photograph beside my phone and wrote three words in a notebook: I am here.
