Chapter 2: Camera doesn’t lie

"Go ahead and do it again, Steve. I just want to be sure the camera catches your face this time."

My cheek burned and my left ear was ringing, yet my voice came out steadier than I expected. I had picked my phone up off the counter without thinking, and the red recording light was blinking in the corner of the screen. Steve stared at it as though it might bite him. His hand was still half raised, and I watched the rage drain out of his face while something more careful crept in to replace it.

"Put that down," he said. "Jenna, I'm serious."

"Serious?" I let out a short laugh that surprised even me. "You just hit your wife in front of your whole family. I don't think you get to tell me what to put down."

Linda moved first, which didn't surprise me at all. She crossed the kitchen in three quick steps and reached for the phone, but I backed away until the edge of the counter pressed into my spine.

"Don't touch me," I said. "If you do, that goes in the video too."

"You're filming your own family like some kind of criminal?" Linda's voice rose to a screech. "After everything we've done for you? We gave you a roof, a name, and a place at this table, and this is how you thank us?"

"I cooked at this table for six years, Linda. I don't remember anyone thanking me for that either."

Nobody answered. Behind me, a small sound made me turn my head, and I saw Max standing frozen beside the stove with his toast forgotten in his fist. His lip was trembling and his eyes were huge and wet. In my last life I would have dropped everything to pick him up and tell him it was all right, and my chest tightened so painfully that for a second I couldn't breathe. He was four years old, he had just watched a grown man hit me, and none of it was his fault.

"Jessica," I said, without taking my eyes off Steve. "Take Max to the living room and put on his cartoons."

"Why do I have to..." Jessica started, then glanced at her brother's face and thought better of it. She grabbed Max's hand and pulled him out, and he kept looking back at me over his shoulder until the doorway swallowed him.

The moment they were gone, I stopped the recording and opened my email. My thumbs were shaking, but I attached the video, typed my own address, and pressed send before anyone could stop me. Then I turned the camera around and took a photo of my cheek, where a red handprint was already rising. Steve watched all of it in silence, and I saw him finally understand that I wasn't bluffing.

"Delete it," he said, and now his voice was soft, almost pleading, the voice he used when he wanted something from me.

"Babe, come on. I shouldn't have hit you, okay? I'm sorry. But you accused me in front of my mother, what was I supposed to do? Delete it and we'll talk like adults."

"It's already sent," I said. "And you're right, Steve. We will talk like adults. My lawyer will talk to yours."

"You don't have a lawyer."

"Then I'll find one."

I walked out of the kitchen before he could answer, and I heard Linda's slippers slapping the floor behind me. In the bedroom I dragged a suitcase out from under the bed and started throwing things into it: my passport, my birth certificate, my laptop, the few clothes that were actually mine. For a moment I caught my reflection in the mirror above the dresser, the red mark on my face and my eyes too bright, and I had to look away. I had given this man eight years, and all I had to show for them fit into one suitcase.

"Jenna." Steve appeared in the doorway and tried to put his hand on my shoulder, gentle now, the way he used to be when we were dating. "Stop this. You're upset and I understand that. Sit down, and we'll sort it out."

"Don't." I stepped out of reach. "You don't get to be gentle with me now."

His hand dropped, and the softness left his voice as quickly as it had come. "Where do you think you're going? Your parents are dead. You haven't worked in six years, and you have no friends left. Where exactly will you sleep tonight?"

"A hotel," I said. "Or a park bench. I honestly don't care."

"And the house, the car, the savings account? They're all in my name. If you walk out that door, you walk out with nothing."

That almost made me smile, because in my last life I had believed every word of it, and I had stayed because of it. I only crouched and pulled a small wooden box from the back of the bottom drawer, the one thing I had kept hidden under my sweaters since the funeral. Inside lay my grandfather's old watch, a few photographs, and a brass key tied to a faded paper tag.

Steve's gaze landed on the box, and he barked out a laugh. "Oh, take it," he said. "Take your grandfather's junk. Take that worthless hole in the ground he left you too, if you can even find it. That's all you've got.

"Thank you," I said, and I meant it more than he could know. I closed the lid and tucked the box under my arm.

I dragged the suitcase down the hall and into the front entry, with Steve following my every step. Linda was already standing beside the door with her arms crossed. When I reached for the handle, she slid the deadbolt shut and dropped the key into the pocket of her robe.

"You're not leaving this house until you apologize to my son," she said.

"Open the door, Linda."

"Not until you..."

"Open it."

"Mom, Max is crying!" Jessica yelled from the living room, and nobody moved to help him. Steve was still standing behind me, and I turned, expecting him to finally tell his mother to let me go.

Instead he snatched the phone out of my hand and hurled it against the wall so hard that the screen exploded into pieces.

"She's not going anywhere," he said, breathing hard. "Not tonight, and not until she's calmed down and learned to talk to this family with some respect."

I stood there with my empty hand still raised, and a cold, clear thought settled over me. The video was safe in my inbox, but I was locked in a house with three people who had already shown me what they would do to keep their grip on me. I had come back sixty days early to get away from them, and I had spent the first morning of those sixty days unable to even reach the front door.

Then the doorbell rang, once, and then again, long and hard. A heavy fist pounded on the wood, and a man's voice called through the door, loud and steady.

"This is the police. Open the door."

I hadn't called anyone.