Madison told her she didn’t belong there.

Claire tried to calm her down.

Madison shoved her into the wall and hit her.

Claire still sounded more worried about upsetting me than about her own pain.

“Please don’t do anything reckless,” she said.

That was the moment an ugly kind of clarity settled over me.

If we called the police immediately, Ethan would say the right things and panic and act horrified, but some part of him would still be tempted to believe this was a misunderstanding inflated by alcohol and fear.

Madison would cry, deny, minimize, blame the dark, blame the hour, blame Claire’s tone, blame grief, blame me.

I had watched that machine work too many times.

I did not need another apology tour around the truth.

I needed proof Ethan could not domesticate.

The idea came so quickly it felt less like invention than recognition.

Madison thought Claire was weak.

She thought Claire would absorb humiliation and then hide.

She also wasn’t expecting resistance.

And Ethan, because he was Ethan, would believe his own eyes if they were delivered through a screen before emotion could reach in and rearrange them.

We had indoor security cameras because of package theft the previous fall.

One covered the foyer and a slice of the living room.

Another covered the hallway to the kitchen.

Madison hated them and had complained until Ethan mostly stopped activating the indoor feed.

But he never removed them.

That night, I turned them on from my phone.

Claire stared at me when I told her my plan.

“We switch places,” I said.

She looked stricken.

“Absolutely not.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll know.”

“No, she won’t.

Not right away.

Not when she’s angry and convinced she’s in control.”

Claire grabbed my wrist.

Her fingers were trembling.

“Lena, I don’t want revenge.”

“Good,” I said.

“Neither do I.

I want evidence.”

That was not the whole truth.

Part of me wanted Madison frightened.

Part of me wanted Ethan ashamed.

But underneath all of that was something colder and more useful: I wanted the end of denial.

We switched clothes in the back room of my shop like we were girls again, except there was nothing playful in it.

I put on Claire’s pale cardigan and beige flats.

I twisted my hair into the loose low bun she always wore when she was tired.

She put on my black sweater and stayed at the shop behind locked glass with pepper spray in the drawer, my office landline beside her, and strict instructions to call 911 if I did not answer within ten minutes.

I drove home in silence.

Savannah in the evening can look soft enough to fool you.

The live oaks arching over the streets, the humid glow on old brick, the bars beginning to fill, people laughing under strings of lights.

I remember feeling furious that the world outside my windshield looked so normal.

I parked under the oak beside our house at 8:47 p.m.

and checked the app once more.

Both cameras were on.

I left the live feed open on my phone and slipped it partway into Claire’s bag so the lens view would still show on the screen if anyone looked down.

The porch light was on.

Inside, the foyer smelled like vanilla candle wax, spilled liquor,