Chapter 1 - Watch Yesterday
Rachel Bennett heard her mother say her name before she reached the stairs.
“Rachel…”
Weak. Frightened.
Wrong.
Rachel had returned home almost two hours earlier than expected after a client canceled their late-afternoon meeting. She had barely set her handbag inside the front door when a noise from upstairs stopped her.
A scrape.
Then her mother’s voice.
“Mark, stop!”
Rachel ran.
She reached the upstairs bathroom and stopped dead.
Helen, sixty-eight, was on her knees beside the open toilet. Her pale-blue cardigan had ridden up around her shoulders, and a wet towel lay twisted beside one knee.
Mark stood behind her.
His hands gripped her shoulders.
“You want water?” he said coldly.
He forced Helen lower.
Her face remained above the water, but only because Helen braced both trembling palms against the toilet seat.
“That’s all you deserve to drink.”
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER!”
Mark spun.
Rachel crossed the bathroom and grabbed his arm.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“She’s exaggerating.”
Rachel pulled him backward.
Helen scrambled away from the toilet and pressed herself against the wall.
Her mother was crying.
Rachel had seen Helen cry at her father’s funeral.
She had seen her cry when Rachel miscarried eleven years earlier.
She had never seen this expression.
Fear.
Not embarrassment.
Not shock.
Fear of Mark.
Mark pointed at Helen.
“She’s been making my life miserable for weeks.”
Rachel stared at him.
Then the open-handed slap happened before she had time to reconsider it.
Her palm struck his cheek.
The sound cracked through the bathroom.
Mark stared at her.
“You put your hands on my mother,” Rachel said.
Her voice shook harder than her hand.
“Get out of my house.”
“Rachel—”
“NOW.”
For once, Mark obeyed.
He grabbed his phone from the counter, stormed into the hallway and disappeared toward the stairs.
Rachel dropped beside Helen.
“Mom.”
Helen’s breathing came rapidly.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
Helen looked toward the bathroom doorway.
Then she raised a trembling finger.
A tiny green light glowed above the hallway entrance.
Security camera.
Rachel had installed it two years earlier after package thefts and a contractor dispute. It captured the upstairs hallway but not the bathroom interior.
Helen whispered, “Please.”
Rachel followed her gaze.
“What?”
“Watch yesterday.”
Rachel felt cold spread across her chest.
“Yesterday?”
Helen lowered her eyes.
Rachel pulled out her phone.
The camera app opened.
She selected the previous day.
3:47 p.m.
The hallway appeared on screen.
Helen walked slowly from the guest bedroom carrying folded laundry.
Then Mark entered frame.
He said something the camera microphone barely captured.
Helen stopped.
Mark stepped closer.
Rachel increased the volume.
“You told her?”
Helen answered, “Not yet.”
Mark grabbed Helen’s phone from her hand.
Helen reached for it.
Mark pushed her backward against the hallway wall.
Not hard enough to knock her down.
Hard enough to frighten her.
Rachel stopped breathing.
The recording continued.
Mark leaned close to Helen.
“You say one word to Rachel, and I’ll make sure she knows exactly what you’ve been doing.”
Helen’s voice trembled.
“I haven’t done anything.”
Mark smiled.
“We’ll see who she believes.”
He walked away with Helen’s phone.
On the screen, Helen remained alone in the hallway for almost thirty seconds.
Then she slowly sat on the floor.
Rachel lowered her own phone.
“Mom…”
Helen could not look at her.
“How long?”
Silence.
“How long has he been doing this?”
Helen whispered, “Long enough that I stopped knowing which day you would believe me.”
Rachel felt something inside her break.
Not only because Mark had hurt her mother.
Because Helen’s answer contained another accusation.
One aimed directly at Rachel.
And deep down, before her mother said another word, Rachel already knew why.
There had been warnings.
Small ones.
A missing bank card.
A broken glass Mark blamed on Helen.
A dinner where Helen barely spoke.
A bruise Helen said came from a cabinet.
A strange message from Mark saying her mother was “getting confused.”
Rachel had seen all of them.
She had simply accepted the easier explanation.
Rachel took Helen’s hands.
“No more.”
Helen finally looked at her.
“You don’t know what he’s done.”
Rachel glanced back at the security camera.
“Then we find out.”
Helen’s expression changed.
Not relief.
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Dread.
Because yesterday, she seemed to be saying, was only the beginning.
