Fool Me Once(16)

Maya debated scrambling herself some eggs with a side of bacon, but the act of merely pouring milk atop cold cereal called out to her. She sat at the table and tried not to think about the reading of Joe’s will that day. She didn’t think that there would be any surprises. Maya had signed a prenup (Joe: “It’s a family thing—if any of us Burketts don’t sign, we get disinherited”), and once Lily was born, Joe had set it up so that, in the event of his death, all his holdings would go into a trust for their daughter. Maya was happy enough with that.

There was no cold cereal in the cabinet. Dang. Isabella had been complaining about the sugar content in them, but had she gone so far as to toss them? Maya headed to the fridge and then stopped.

Isabella.

The nanny cam.

She had woken up thinking about it, which was odd. Sure, she checked it most days, but not all. It never felt urgent to her. Nothing even the slightest bit questionable ever occurred. Maya normally kept the fast-forward button pressed down. On camera, Isabella was always sunny and happy, which was a bit troubling because that wasn’t Isabella’s default state. She did light up around Lily, but Isabella had a face like a totem pole. She wasn’t big on smiling.

Yet she always smiled on the nanny cam. She was the perfect nanny all the time, and let’s face it, no one is that. No one. We all have our moments, don’t we?

Did Isabella know the nanny cam was there?

Maya’s laptop and the SD card reader Eileen had given her were in her backpack. For a while she had used her military-issue backpack—a beige nylon thing of many pockets—but too many military wannabes ordered the same thing online and something about it felt too showy. Joe had bought her a Kevlar laptop backpack from Tumi. She thought that it was overpriced until she saw what those military wannabes paid for their backpacks online.

She picked up the picture frame, pressed the button on the side, and took hold of the SD card. Suppose Isabella had figured it out. First off, would that be such a stretch? Not really. If you were at all perceptive—and Isabella was—you might wonder why your employer would suddenly buy a new picture frame. If you were at all perceptive—and again, Isabella was—you might wonder why this new picture frame would show up for the first time on the day after your employer buried her murdered husband.

Or if you were at all perceptive, you might not. Who knew?

Maya slid the SD card into the reader and then plugged the reader into the USB port. Why was she feeling anxious about this? If her suspicions were correct, if Isabella had figured out that the new picture frame held more than a potpourri of family photographs, then, of course, all Maya would see would be Isabella on her best behavior. She wouldn’t be dumb enough to do something suspicious. The whole idea of a hidden nanny cam was that it was hidden. Once a nanny knew about it, the whole enterprise became at best moot.

She hit the play button. The video worked on a motion detector, so it started up when Isabella walked by carrying a cup of coffee in, of course, a mug with a protective lid. No chance any hot liquid would spill on a little girl’s skin. Isabella picked Lily’s stuffed giraffe off the floor and started to walk back to the kitchen and out of the frame.

“Mommy.”

There was no audio with this camera, so Maya turned away and looked up the stairs at her daughter. The familiar warmth flowed through her. She might be cynical about so much of the parenting process, but that feeling when you look at your child, when the rest of the world fades away, when everything but that little face becomes just scenery in the deep background—that Maya understood.

“Hey, precious.”

Maya had read somewhere that the average two-year-old has a vocabulary of about fifty words. That seemed about right. “More” was a big one on the little-kid list. Maya hurried up the stairs and reached over the kid gate and lifted Lily into her arms. Lily clutched one of those indestructible cardboard books in both hands, this one an abridged version of Dr. Seuss’s classic One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Lately she’d been carrying the book around the way some kids carry a teddy bear. A book rather than a stuffed animal—this pleased Maya to no end.

“You want Mommy to read you the book?”

Lily nodded.

Maya brought her downstairs and sat her at the kitchen table. The video was still running. One thing Maya had learned: Little kids love repetition. They didn’t want new experiences quite yet. Lily had a whole collection of board books. Maya loved the narrative drive of the P. D. Eastman books like Are You My Mother? or A Fish Out of Water, both featuring scary moments and twist endings. Lily would listen—any book was better than no book—but she always returned to the rhymes and artwork of Dr. Seuss, and really, who could blame her?

Maya glanced at the computer monitor as the nanny cam video played on. On the screen, Lily and Isabella were both on the couch. Isabella fed Lily one Goldfish cracker at a time, like they were smelts awarded to a performing seal. Taking a cue from the feed, Maya grabbed the Goldfish down from the pantry and spread some out on the table. Lily started to eat them one at a time.

“You want something else?”

Lily shook her head and pointed to the book. “Read.”

“Not ‘Read.’ Say, ‘Please, Mommy, will you read . . . ’”

Maya stopped. Enough. She picked up the book, turned to page one, started with the one fish, two fish, turned the page. She was just reaching the fat fish with the yellow hat when something on the computer monitor snagged her gaze.