“Someone tried to delete them,” Tobias muttered, lips thinning as he pulled Quinn in closer. Curling his arm around her to give her his warmth and the sense of protection she needed from the boogeyman stuck in her skull.
“I saw a movie like this once.”
“Be quiet.” Distracted, the bite of his snarl was missing as he leaned into her to view the screen better. Tapped something to make the window even larger, his disgruntled sound faded into a muttering growl.
The image became clear then settled into a murky haze, dark shapes jerking through the point of view as the time track jumped and slowed. Fast enough to make Quinn jump, he smacked his finger against the keys, pausing the video on a grainy image that seemed to show nothing at all in the eerie dining room.
“What is…? She’s holding something.”
“Who is holding what?” Quinn squinted at the image, trying to make sense of the soft edges and blurred lines. Like staring at a mystery puzzle image, Meghan coalesced out of the pinpricks of light. Stooped and crowded into the short hall joining kitchen to dining room, something showed in her hand.
A touch to the keys began to play the video once again, but it jumped ahead twenty minutes, showing the dining room empty save for ghosts of light and shadow.
“Fuck.” Tobias ground his teeth together, tugging the laptop closer even as he edged them both forward. The intensity of his gaze trained on the screen, he watched with a predator’s focus while people came and went.
Another clearer image presented itself, though it wasn’t much better. Meghan stood in the short hall once again, but this time Quinn and the kids sat at the table. Something bright clutched in her hand, her face turned to watch through the door.
“Do you know what that is in her hand?”
“No, I can’t… I remember falling asleep at the table. You can see my head right there. I felt awful when she came back with the kids’ breakfast. She gave me an earful about how Elise could have fallen, or Adam done something—”
“She said that to you?”
“Well, yes, but it could have—”
“She’s standing right there, Quinn. Those things wouldn’t have happened.” Fingertips caressing her cheek, he guided her to face him. An exasperated huff of warm air feathering her face when she refused to look at him. “Does she say things like that often?”
“She’s right.” Quinn slid her lips sideways, trying to muffle the hard sniff that staved off the burn of tears. She’d been such a horrible mother so far. “They’re just babies…”
“Quinn,” Tobias said through a low, rumbling growl as he pinched her chin and jerked her watery grays to meet him. “You are not to blame.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, twisting away to face the laptop again. “Can you make it—”
A series of movements made the window massive, taking up the screen and more. Tobias scrolled around the paused image until the hall stood center stage. The hint of something in Meghan’s hands became clearer. As did a hint of color beyond the sickly gray-greens.
“You did get color…”
“Just tell me if you recognize what she’s holding.”
Racking her memory for any ideas of what the container might be, she could think of nothing. Bright yellow, it looked like a cereal box, though small. A terse shake of her head was all she could offer, agitated fingers catching the touch pad on accident and sending the video back into stumbling motion.
Meghan didn’t appear from the short hall with cereal for the kids. Plates with waffles and eggs adorned the tray she carried. The small box was nowhere to be found.
Quinn jerked her hand back, grimacing as she began to fast forward the footage. Speeding through the days, it showed so many things. Quinn on her knees before him, Tobias rucking up her skirts as he carried her to the table or a convenient wall. Strangling down the heavy swell of resentment as she watched the lost woman with her sun struck smile, Quinn tried to concentrate on the other moments instead.
The ones where Meghan seemed to scrutinize Quinn’s every move as they ate. Urging Quinn to eat more with sharp looks and hard gestures, even directing Adam’s attention to how Quinn listed at the table. The cheery smile once Quinn ran off to be sick, a flurry of activity as Meghan doted on the kids. Meghan soothing their cries, snuggling them to her chest. Her whole demeanor bizarre, at once mothering and overexcited. There were only the faint images of her in the hall twice. The stuttering movements of the warped recording made it all the more eerie.
Far more disturbing were the various feeds that Tobias swiped through with rapid flicks of his wrist. Meghan appearing ghostly in a long white gown as she hovered over the sleeping children. Easy to explain it away as just checking on them, except for the gleam of teeth in her wide smile and the white knuckled grip on the crib side. Standing there for what the time track proved was hours, her careful caresses of their soft hair intermittent at best. Drifting through the halls, pausing outside of Kahler’s bedroom with head tilted as she listened. Hiding a giggle behind her hand as some unheard sound came through the door.
“You were screaming,” Tobias murmured, zooming in by spreading his fingers across the pad.
“You don’t know that. There’s no sound.”
“I remember that night.”
“You can’t—”
“I was wearing a green silk vest, the one you liked, when I went in there. You ripped it while fighting me that night. Curtis threw it out.” There was no nuance to his tones, no emotions to be salvaged from the evenness of his words. Even the bond remained quiet, refusing to let on how he might feel about what he said.
