The fork never reached my mother's mouth. It hung there, trembling, while my four-year-old daughter stood on her dining chair and pointed across the roast chicken at the woman I had married three weeks earlier. *She's not my new mommy. She's a monster.*

I waited until Lily was with Hannah before confronting Meredith.

She was in our bedroom, arranging jewelry in a velvet box. Sunlight spilled across the bed, catching the diamond earrings I had given her on our first anniversary of dating.

She looked up when I entered.

"What's wrong?"

I placed a still image from the camera footage on the dresser.

Meredith glanced at it.

For half a second, her face was blank.

Then she laughed.

"You're spying on me now?"

"You installed a camera in the laundry room."

"I didn't."

"The account is registered to your email."

"Someone must have used my information."

"You told Lily that if she spoke to me, you'd make sure I knew how difficult she was."

Meredith stood slowly.

"That footage is out of context."

"What context makes that sentence acceptable?"

She crossed her arms.

"Lily has been having severe behavioral problems. I've been trying to document them so we can get her professional help."

"You recorded yourself threatening a four-year-old?"

"I was encouraging her to follow rules."

"By locking her in a laundry room?"

"I never locked her in!"

I stared at her.

"Then why did she say she couldn't open the door?"

"Because she was upset."

"Why was there a chair in the room?"

"She dragged it there."

"Why was her shoe on the floor?"

"David, I will not stand here and answer a hundred questions based on the word of a child who doesn't understand what she's saying."

Her voice cracked at exactly the right moment.

Before Sarah died, I had watched people use tears to escape accountability. I had never imagined I would be so close to believing them again.

Meredith approached me.

"Look at me."

I did.

"I love you. I love Lily. I married you because I wanted to build a family, not because I wanted to spend every night fighting about a child who misses her mother."

"Then why did you hide Sarah's photograph?"

She blinked.

"What photograph?"

"The one from Lily's bedside table."

"I put it away because Lily was having nightmares."

"Who told you to do that?"

"No one. I thought it was best."

"You decided my daughter shouldn't see her mother?"

"I decided she needed to live in the present."

I looked at the woman I had married three weeks earlier.

I remembered how she had comforted me during the anniversary of Sarah's death, how she had cooked dinner when I forgot to eat, how she had promised never to replace Lily's mother.

Now every kind memory seemed to have a question attached to it.

Meredith sat on the bed.

"David, you're exhausted. You're making a terrible mistake."

"Perhaps."

"Let me talk to Lily. I can apologize for anything she misunderstood."

"No."

Her head snapped up.

"Excuse me?"

"You will not be alone with my daughter until I understand what happened."

For the first time, she looked genuinely furious.

"You can't do that. I'm her stepmother."

"And I'm her father."