Chapter 3 - THE SECURITY CAMERA REPLAY
What I didn’t know was that Marco couldn’t sleep later that night. Restless and irritated by the lingering tension in the house, he had picked up his laptop at the kitchen island, pulled up the application for our living-room security camera, and tapped on the playback timeline for earlier that evening. He expected to see me pacing, exaggerating, or perhaps storming out to prove a point. Instead, the timestamp glowed at 11:14 p.m. as he watched the screen show the couch where he was sitting, illuminated by the cold blue light of the television.
On the floor a few feet away, the infrared night-vision mode captured a pale, disheveled figure collapsing sideways against the rug. He watched himself glance up for three seconds, mutter something dismissive, and look back down at his phone. Then, the footage showed me dragging myself across the hardwood floor on my stomach, using my elbows and forearms to bridge the distance to the bassinet while tears caught the camera's faint lens flare. Marco sat in the quiet dark of the kitchen, the screen glowing against his face as the crushing weight of undeniable visual evidence dismantled every single excuse he had manufactured to keep from caring.
