Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
THE PURPOSE
I can’t stop thinking about one sentence.
“Since when are you so shy?”
People don’t say that to someone they’re just sleeping with.
They say it to someone they’ve known. Someone they’ve watched change.
I make sure this morning I’m the one who makes the coffee.
The kitchen feels a little more like mine again.
Not much. Just enough.
This morning, both Gavin and Paige leave.
Him first, her about twenty minutes later.
Today is my day home.
Once they’re gone, I open my laptop.
I’m not looking for another kiss.
I know what I saw and I know I have enough.
Vivian was right. The affair isn’t the question anymore.
The question is how long my life has been built around a lie.
I start reading emails.
Old warranty information. Installation confirmations.
Anything attached to the nanny cam.
Something nags at me.
Not the footage. But the purchase itself.
I pull up the original confirmation email.
I read it slowly.
Then again.
Something doesn’t fit.
I remember the conversation Gavin and I had the night he ordered it.
How quickly he dismissed my concerns. How prepared he seemed with answers. How eager he was to get it installed. At the time, I thought he was trying to reassure me. Now I wonder if he was trying to redirect me.
I write down the date.
Camera ordered.
Camera delivered.
Camera installed.
Paige hired.
The timeline begins lining up in ways I never noticed before.
Not because I’m dumb.
I just trusted my husband.
I begin organizing everything I already have.
The video clips. The timestamps. The screenshots. The messages. The notes.
Not because I’m collecting more evidence.
Because I’m building one story.
One clear timeline.
One truth.
I take a break in the early afternoon and take Noah for a walk to where the block party will be held.
Audrey and Dean are there, already starting to set up some items.
I waste no time in getting involved, starting with moving tables with Audrey. Then I confirm the coffee order.
I look at Dean’s notebook and the organized list of items.
I write my initials next to the items I’ve seen.
I like when tiny details make sense.
Tiny details are manageable and solvable.
Unlike marriages.
“It’s like mission control over here,” Dean says to me.
“Kind of feels like it,” I say.
“Plan is all coming together now,” he says.
“It really is.”
“I bet you always have a plan, Claire.”
“I used to.”
“Used to?”
“Yeah. But lately I remember I still do.”
“That’s a good thing,” Dean says.
Audrey calls him a name, and he walks away.
I manage another twenty minutes before Noah makes his final protest that means I either let him out and crawl around or take him home for a nap.
Later that night I’m alone at the dining room table.
The flash drive rests beside my laptop.
It’s so small it’s funny.
How something that fits in the palm of my hand can hold the end of my marriage.
I log into the nanny cam site, where I can access way more options.
I click through several menus.
Recordings. Settings. Storage. Cloud. Library.
In the library I notice there are two categories.
Motion Events
Saved Clips
The motion events are thousands. Normal. Nothing to really see.
But for the saved clips…
These are manually saved.
And there are plenty showing.
It makes me wonder why anyone would manually save nanny cam clips. I mean, not unless they were trying to track and prove something. Which hasn’t been done by me.
My pulse starts racing.
I go in and see some of the names and my heart freezes up.
TONIGHT! With a heart emoji
Miss you already
Don’t watch near anyone!
The list goes on and on.
Some of them are flirty, and some of them are much… more…
My hand shakes as I open one.
The camera angle is weird.
I realize the camera is in the guest bathroom.
Candles are lit.
A voice appears.
“Is this what you wanted to see, Gavin?”
It’s Paige’s voice.
She moves the camera toward the bathroom mirror.
I see skin—too much skin—and I quickly close the file.
I stand up.
I swallow hard.
I refuse to open any other.
There’s no need.
The purpose of the nanny cam is now undeniable.
“It was never a nanny cam,” I whisper to myself.
It was my husband and his mistress… her making videos… for…
I move back into operations mode, both hands shaking.
Me being me, I have two flash drives, just in case the first one didn’t work.
I move every video I refuse to watch onto the backup flash drive.
I know how this goes.
Clouds disappear. Accounts get deleted. Phones get replaced.
But these drives won’t lose evidence.
When I’m finished, I close out the site, and I stand at the dining room table, holding a flash drive in each hand.
The one in my left hand will destroy my marriage.
The one in my right hand will ruin Paige’s life for sure.
I take a deep breath.
All I know now is that the receipts have been gathered and organized.
And the time has come to expose what the hell has actually been going on in my perfect house.