The Nanny, the Husband, and the Woman They Forgot I Was novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Two-Party

Nobody moved.

The associates had stopped breathing.

Blake leaned back in his chair for the first time all morning.

He smiled at me, slow.

I felt my face go hot.

For one second I was back in the hall mirror with four-day hair.

Then Vivian put her bag of almonds down.

"Who installed the monitor?" she said.

Blake's lawyer turned the apple in his hand.

"Irrelevant."

"Indulge me. I'm old." She looked at Blake. "Mr. Linwood. Who installed the camera in your daughter's nursery?"

Blake didn't answer.

"I'll answer, then," I said.

My voice came out steady. I was as surprised as anyone.

"He did. The Sunday after we brought her home. He stood on the rocking chair to mount it. He made the app account in his own name, with his own email, and he read me the settings out loud." I looked at Blake. "Motion-activated recording. Thirty-day cloud storage. You said, 'Now we'll never miss anything.'"

"That doesn't..."

"He accepted the terms of service," I went on. "They say, in bold, that the device records audio and video and that anyone in its view may be recorded. The camera has a green light on the front. It was on. He was sitting four feet from it."

Vivian took over without looking at me, smooth as a relay.

"The statute protects confidential communications," she said. "A conversation isn't confidential when a man has it in front of his own recording camera, which he installed, set to record, and agreed in writing would record. My client didn't press anything. Your client's device recorded your client. She saved what his app had already made."

Blake's lawyer had put the apple down.

"And I'd think hard," Vivian added, "before you call the district attorney about a wife who saved a clip from her husband's baby monitor. Because the first thing the district attorney will do is listen to it."

She tilted her head at the associates.

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