Chapter 11 - The Video
The video was from Mia's phone.
It began after I discovered the dress.
Not before.
In it, I was crying and shouting.
Mia stood in the doorway.
Lauren said, "Claire, stop threatening her."
I had not threatened anyone.
But edited out of context, it looked ugly.
Then the clip ended seconds before Dad entered.
Dad's attorney, Karen Mills, watched it twice.
"This proves you're upset," she said. "Not violent."
Lauren's filing described me as "physically intimidating."
I weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds.
Mia played varsity soccer.
Still, lies do not need to be logical if they are repeated enough.
Karen asked whether the house had cameras.
Dad said no.
Then I remembered the doorbell camera.
It did not see my bedroom.
But it recorded audio from the upstairs hallway when the front door was open.
We checked the cloud archive.
At 7:18 that morning, the front door had been propped open because Dad was carrying boxes to his car.
The camera captured Mia laughing upstairs.
Then my voice:
"Why?"
Mia:
"It was hideous anyway. I did you a favor."
Then Lauren:
"Don't make a scene. She's just a child."
Clear.
Unedited.
Dad sat back.
"Send it to Karen."
We did.
Lauren's claim did not disappear instantly, but it weakened.
Then the camera archive gave us something we were not looking for.
Three weeks earlier, it recorded a delivery.
Lauren signed for an envelope from Ruth Palmer.
My grandmother.
She carried it inside.
Ten minutes later, she came back out alone and put torn pieces of paper into the recycling bin.
Dad froze the frame.
On one piece, we could read handwriting.
Claire.
I stared at the screen.
Lauren had not merely failed to give me Grandma's letters.
She had destroyed them.
Then Ruth called.
"Claire, there was more than a letter in that envelope."
"What?"
"A check."
May you like
Another check meant for me.
This one was for ten thousand dollars.
