The silence inside the house felt unbearable without Ava’s laughter echoing through it.
Then my phone rang.
Miss Greenwood again.
Her voice trembled immediately.
“Mrs. Carter… I don’t know if I should even be calling. But I was reviewing security footage from the daycare after everything that happened.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
A long pause followed.
“I’m sending you the video now,” she whispered. “Your husband lied to you.”
The room suddenly felt freezing.
A notification appeared on my phone seconds later.
Video attachment.
My hands shook so badly I almost dropped the device opening it.
At first, the footage looked ordinary.
Mark helping Ava from the car.
Ava holding Mr. Bun-Bun against her chest.
Then a woman stepped into frame.
Tall brunette.
Cream-colored coat.
She crouched down smiling at Ava like they already knew each other.
Confusion flickered through me immediately.
Then the woman handed Ava a bottled drink with a café logo on it.
Ava smiled brightly and took it without hesitation.
Then the woman touched Mark’s arm.
Not casually.
Intimately.
My stomach dropped straight through the floor.
The footage continued.
Mark and the woman walked Ava toward the daycare entrance together.
Then they returned to the car smiling at each other.
I rewound the video with trembling fingers and zoomed in on the woman’s face.
The air vanished from my lungs.
Lauren.
Mark’s coworker.
The same woman from his company Christmas party.
The same woman whose name kept lighting up his phone late at night.
The same woman he always had explanations for.
Suddenly every strange moment from the past year crashed into place.
Late meetings.
Locked screens.
Midnight “client emergencies.”
The night I walked into the kitchen and caught him texting in the dark.
“Who’s that?” I’d asked.
“Lauren from work,” he answered too quickly. “Just business stuff.”
I trusted him.
God, I trusted him.
I called Miss Greenwood immediately.
“She seemed comfortable around your husband’s coworker,” the teacher admitted quietly. “That’s part of why the footage bothered me.”
Comfortable.
Meaning Ava had met her before.
