on the nightstan

ep was a country Beverly could no longer visit. Every time

dden, pierced through

jeans before changing for bed. With careful fingers, she reached into the pocket and retrieved the tissue-wrapped foil packet, then slid it into the

or door, her hand closing around the cold metal of the doorknob. She turn

ed like a great, dark bea

liar. The smell of the cleaner she'd used hours ago-a lemo

all black box mounted be

dash

r-bender, obsessed with insurance fraud. "It records ever

di

up, her fingers fumbling with the device. It took a moment to figure out how to re

ing it in the house. T

and a pair of earbuds from her tote bag, a

She quickly plugged in her headphones. Her hands were shaking so

reen. A long list of video f

hitched. Wh

dates of his last "business trip" to the ne

phalt under a gray sky. She fast-forwarded through the visual, focusing only on the sound. For a

. A woman's laugh

, dripping with a

you finally going to lea

uth to stifle the gasp that tore from her lungs. The

tenderness she hadn't heard in years.

se. Just have to wai

of it sucked the

aying that for months. I'm tired of wai

left, the doctors said. The moment she's gone, I'm

s actively waiting, hoping, for his own mother to die. His sick, bedridden mot

a tapestry of their affair. Flirtatious chatter about dinner at a high-end steakhouse. M

words that fla

. "She hasn't worked in a decade. What's she going to do withou

, slicing away eleven years of h

as vaguely familiar. Wher

stunning woman with perfect makeup and a designer handbag had passed th

ie. The whole

, transforming into something harder, hotter. Rag

s stoppe

ive into the laptop's USB port. First, she copied the damning file she had just h

aptured this, what

card could hold months of footage before it started overwriting itself. At the

t like a gi

d over the engine's hum, every conversation Warren had never imagined anyone else would hear.

e copied folder to a cloud stora

pocket, beside the tissue-wrapped condom wrapper. Two pieces of

wser history where she had logged into her cloud account. She wiped the SD card of any tr

, her path. No trace of her mi

droom, the first hint of dawn was pain

leeping face. The face she had loved since she was twenty

to cry. There were no m

ainty of what she had to do. This

and closed her eyes. The audio played on a loop in her

my mom

is mother have

ke shape in the darkness. It wasn't j

s inhe