Chapter 6: The Video
I called Janet Flores at eight-fifteen that same evening.
She was a colleague of Daniel's — or had been, before his company restructured.
I had met her twice at work events and remembered her as quiet, observant, the kind of person who listened more than she spoke.
She had been seated near the back of the pavilion, close to the entrance.
Close to the security camera.
Close enough to see everything.
"I started recording when Linda stood up," Janet told me.
"Something felt wrong.
The way she was looking at the cake — I don't know.
I just had a feeling."
"How much did you get?"
"From when she grabbed it.
All of it.
Her face, Daniel's face, the whole room.
And audio." A pause.
"Emma, you can hear exactly what she said."
I closed my eyes briefly.
"Can you send it to my attorney?"
"I already looked up her firm online.
I can send it tonight if you give me the email."
I gave her Carol's address.
"Janet," I said.
"Thank you."
"I have a daughter," she said simply.
"She's three.
I kept thinking — what if someone did that to her someday." A short silence.
"You don't have to thank me."
The video arrived in Carol's inbox at eight forty-seven.
Carol texted me at nine-oh-three: *Watched it.
Clear footage, clear audio.
This is significant.
Call me Monday but sleep tonight — you've done enough for one day.*
I put my phone face-down on my mother's guest bed and lay in the dark.
The baby moved — a slow roll, not a kick.
Reassuring herself, maybe.
Or reassuring me.
"I've got you," I said quietly to the ceiling.
"Whatever happens.
I've got you."
I slept better than I had any right to.
---
Daniel called at seven the next morning.
I let it ring once, then answered.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine."
"The baby?"
"Fine."
A pause.
"Can I come over?"
"To my mother's house?"
"Yes."
I thought about it.
"Give me an hour."
He arrived in fifty-five minutes.
My mother let him in without warmth and without hostility — she simply opened the door, said "She's in the kitchen," and went to her garden.
Daniel looked tired.
He sat across from me at my mother's table and wrapped both hands around the coffee mug I'd set out.
"She called me eleven times last night," he said.
"I know.
She called your guests too."
He looked up.
"Marcus told me," I said.
Daniel set the mug down.
"Emma, I didn't know she was going to do that."
"Which part?
The cake or the phone calls?"
"Either." He leaned forward.
"I swear to you.
I knew she was upset about the gender.
I should have handled it Thursday.
I didn't.
That's on me.
But I didn't know she'd—" He stopped.
"I didn't know she was capable of that."
"I did," I said.
He went still.
"Not the cake specifically.
But something.
I've been watching her build toward something like this for two years." I looked at him steadily.
"I think part of you knew too."
He didn't deny it.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
"I want you to tell me what you said to her last night.
After I left."
He exhaled slowly.
"I told her what she did was wrong.
That she owed you an apology.
That the property situation was not what she thought and I should have corrected her years ago." He paused.
"She told me you had manipulated me.
That you'd hidden the property on purpose to trap me.
That the attorney showing up was planned."
"And?"
"And I told her that was not what happened."
"Did she believe you?"
"No." His voice was flat.
"She never believes anything that doesn't fit what she's already decided."
I nodded slowly.
"There's a video, Daniel."
He looked up.
"A guest recorded it.
Clear footage.
Clear audio.
My attorney has it."
Something moved across his face — not surprise, exactly.
More like a man watching a door he'd been leaning against finally give way.
"What are you going to do with it?"
"That depends," I said, "on what Linda does next."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"She's not going to apologize, Emma."
"I know."
"She's going to make this worse before she accepts any of it."
"I know that too."
He picked up the coffee mug.
Set it down again without drinking.
"I need you to know something," he said.
"Whatever you decide — about the property, about us — I'm not going to fight you.
I'm not going to let her turn this into something it isn't."
It was the most direct thing he had said to me in years.
I wanted to believe it.
I almost did.
Then my phone lit up on the table between us.
A news alert.
Local community Facebook group — the kind where everyone in a twenty-mile radius posted everything from lost dogs to neighborhood gossip.
Someone had posted about the baby shower.
Not Janet.
Not any of the guests I knew.
The post was anonymous.
And it described me as a woman who had "entrapped a good man with a property scheme" and "deliberately humiliated his mother in public."
It had forty-seven comments in the last three hours.
Daniel read it over my shoulder.
"She didn't post that herself," he said quietly.
"She doesn't know how to use that site."
May you like
"No," I agreed.
"But she knows someone who does."
