The Light in Her Room

Episode 4 of 5 of My Husband’s Second Phone by Helen Abbott

I put the phone on the kitchen table at eight in the morning and I sat behind it and I waited for my husband to come home.

He saw it from the door.

He put the bag down, handles to the door. He took his boots off. He came and sat across from me, and he looked at the phone, and then he looked at me, and he did not pretend for one second.

“Cole told you.”

“Cole told me some of it.”

“Okay.” He put both palms flat on the table. “Then I’ll tell you the rest, and I need you to not look at the ceiling while I do it. Not here either. It’s just her room, but I don’t know that for sure, and I’d rather you got used to not looking up.”

So I didn’t look up. I looked at his hands.

Three weeks ago he’d gone up to change the battery in Ruby’s smoke detector because it was chirping. He took the cover off. There was no chirp. There was a lens.

“It’s the size of a pencil eraser,” he said. “It’s wired into the house power. Somebody stood on a chair in our daughter’s room and did that. That’s not a stranger. That’s somebody who’s been in this house.”

“Who’s been in this house, Nate.”

“Your mother, before she passed. The neighbor. Cole, once, years ago. The guy who did the furnace.” He stopped. “And Blake.”

Blake.

The man I used to know, who never really left. Ruby’s father, if you count the eight weeks he stuck around before she was born, which I do not. He came back eight months ago wanting to be involved. Those were his words. Involved. He had a new job and a new haircut and he sat in our living room and asked to see her school pictures.

He’d used our bathroom. He’d been upstairs.

“You think it’s him.”

“I think he wants her,” Nate said. “I think he wants to be able to say we’re bad for her. I think he’s been sitting somewhere at night watching our kid sleep and waiting for one of us to do something he can use. And I think if I’d told you three weeks ago, you’d have driven to his place and thrown it in his face, and he’d have pulled the feed and denied it, and we’d have had a hole in the ceiling and nothing else.”

He was right. I hated that he was right.

“So you called my brother.”

“Your brother installs these things for a living. He knows what they are and where they send to.” Nate almost smiled. “And he’s the one person Blake would never expect to be on your side. Neither would you.”

That landed. He let it.

“The phone,” I said.

“Blake was in our house. He could have gotten into anything. Our phones, the wifi, the doorbell camera. Cole said assume all of it. So I bought that at a gas station and Cole bought one too and that’s the only way we’ve talked for three weeks.”

“And the money.”

“Went to somebody Cole knows who can find out where the picture goes. That’s Friday. Friday we get a name.”

I sat there.

Three weeks of she doesn’t know. Three weeks of my husband sleeping four feet from me with this in his chest, kissing the top of my head, asking Ruby about the glue kid.

“I thought you were leaving me,” I said.

“I know.”

“I built a whole woman. I gave her a laugh.”

“I know you did.” He reached across and put his hand over mine. “You typed yes at eleven fourteen at night, Grace. I know exactly what you thought. I just couldn’t fix it yet.”

The phone buzzed between us.

We both looked at it. Neither of us picked it up. Then he turned it so we could both read.

R: Got it early. Feed’s live right now. He’s watching.

Nate’s hand tightened on mine.

R: And Grace. It’s not coming from across town.

Three dots.

R: It’s on your wifi. He’s close enough to be on your wifi.

I turned my head toward the front window before I could stop it.

My Husband’s Second Phone · ← The Brother Nobody Talks To · Friday →