Chapter 2: Three Seconds Before the Sl\*p
Part 2 ⬇️
The video was forty-three seconds long.
The cousin had been recording when the first cake candle was lit.
The angle caught everything the guests near me had missed — my mother-in-law leaning across the table before anyone noticed, her hand coming down hard on my daughter's cheek, and my daughter's head snapping to the side.
But that wasn't what made my hands go cold.
It was the three seconds before the sl\*p.
My husband had turned and looked directly at his mother.
She had glanced back at him.
And he had given the smallest nod — almost nothing — before he looked away.
He knew.
He had seen it coming and said nothing.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark, watching those three seconds four times in a row.
My phone buzzed.
A new message from my husband.
"Delete whatever my cousin sent you.
She doesn't understand what she recorded."
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand.
My daughter stirred in the borrowed T-shirt, reached out in her sleep, and found my hand.
May you like
I held it.
Then my husband's mother called.
