It was late on a Saturday morning and the curses and banging noises she heard coming from the living room were clue enough for Karen Dubois that her husband Adam had risen at long last.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, she heaved a long suffering sigh.
It was hardly surprising that he should have slept in so late considering how long they'd stayed at that Christmas party the night before, or that he should be feeling more than a little under the weather this morning what with how much he'd had to drink. Getting him a glass of tap water and a bottle of the strongest painkillers they kept in the house, she headed for the next room to see what was left of her spouse.
As she walked into the room, she was expecting to find him sprawled in a limp heap in his favorite chair with all of the lamps switched off and the blinds drawn against the glare of morning sunlight reflecting off the blanket of snow outside. Adam would be moaning and groaning over the hangover he simply had to be suffering through, she was certain, and would be vehemently swearing off booze for probably the hundredth time. Karen was stopped in her tracks though when she found a surprising scene.
The blinds were drawn all right and the only lights lit were the ones blinking merrily on the Christmas tree, but her husband was not in his overstuffed recliner. Instead, he was up on unsteady legs and hunched over their entertainment center, fiddling with the digital video recorder connected to their television.
"Adam?"
She had certainly not been shouting or anything, but he still cringed, recoiling from the sound of her voice. "Softly, honey," he pleaded in a whimper.
She obliged him by lowering her voice. "I've got some medicine for you. What are you doing over there?"
He didn't answer for a moment, bracing himself against the entertainment center as a wave of dizziness struck him, vigorously suppressing the accompanying nausea. "Well, you know how I've been worried about that girl Lacey . . ."
She groaned, the volume of her voice involuntarily rising in her frustration.
"Damn it, Adam! How many times do we have to talk about this? She's a good girl from a good family. If she was anything less, do you really believe I would trust her with our daughter's safety?"
He staggered away from the entertainment center, clutching the remote control in his hand. "I know how fond you are of her, Karen, and I do agree that she seems to be taking good care of Daisy when she comes over to babysit, but why not be absolutely sure?" Falling into his recliner with a grunt, he had to work desperately to keep anything from coming up.
A tiny, secret smile appeared on the wife's face, suggesting that fond might not be the right word for how she felt about that babysitter, but Adam was far too ill right now to notice it.
Once he was reassured that the contents of his belly were going to stay where they were, Karen's husband thought to ask, "Where is Daisy, by the way?"
"Over at the Patterson's playing with her friend Becca." She walked over to stand by his chair, glaring at him even as she set the pills and the water down next to him.
It was a mercy for both Adam and their daughter that the girl was gone, she knew. Her husband would never have survived having a rambunctious preteen running around the house right now, and Daisy certainly did not need to have to see her daddy when he was in this kind of state.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself and lowering her voice again, Karen told him, "Look, I know you just can't make yourself believe that Lacey is as good and decent a girl as she seems for some stupid reason, or that she must be abusing or neglecting our child or maybe stealing stuff from us. Considering that nothing has ever gone missing though, and considering that we've never found so much as a scratch or bruise on Daisy, why can't you just accept that you're being stupid and paranoid?"
"You may be right, Karen," he replied, reaching for the pills and glass of water, "but why not be absolutely sure?" Adam took his medicine with only a sip of water, but it was still almost enough to make him heave up all over himself.
"I already am sure," she informed him coolly, "but I can't imagine what it will take to convince you."
"That's just it, honey. I've finally figured out a way to find out what exactly happens in this house when we're not home." His hand was shaking just a bit as he pointed across the room.
She looked over at the bookshelves with a lost expression, wondering what on earth he could be talking about. There was something different about what she was seeing, but it took her a few moments to figure out what it was. "Where did that clock come from?"
"I ordered it online. It's one of those nanny cam things and has a tiny little camera hidden in it! All I had to do was connect it to our DVR and it should have recorded everything that happened in this room last night."
Adam was very carefully considering the remote control he was gripping in one hand, trying to figure out which button was which, so he didn't notice how his wife went very pale at this revelation.
"What!?"
Her husband reacted instantly to that exclamation, whimpering miserably and waving an urgent hand to get her to turn the volume of her voice back down.
"Softly please, honey. Softly."
Karen's knees had suddenly grown very weak and she needed to quickly brace herself against the wall to keep herself from staggering. "How could you do something like that?" she demanded.
"Oh, I know I should have told you about it," he admitted after his moment of distress subsided, "but I guess I was just too afraid to. Your so very fond of this girl that I figured you'd try to talk me out of it or maybe even try to forbid me from getting the nanny cam. I could almost imagine you even taking her aside and warning her that the camera was there!"
Karen's mouth was moving, but nothing comprehensible was coming out. She could only watch with great alarm as her husband switched on the TV, quickly dialing the volume way down, and then turned on the DVR.
"No!" she pleaded desperately. "We can't watch this!"
He gave her a quizzical look. "Why not?"
"Because . . . because . . ." Karen's mind was racing as she tried to come up with some plausible reason why they shouldn't watch this recording. "Because it's spying! We don't have any right to invade Lacey's privacy like this!"
"She's in our house, getting paid to look after our daughter, honey," Adam reminded her. "It's not like she can sue us or anything. I don't think she can, anyway . . ." Using the remote, he opened up the recorder's menu to find what the camera had captured.
His wife was becoming increasingly frantic, knowing as she did exactly what that secret camera must have seen happen in this room the previous night. "But I am absolutely sure that Lacey didn't do anything wrong last night!" she insisted anxiously. "There's no reason at all for us to watch this!"
He moved the cursor on the screen until it highlighted what he wanted to watch. "Calm down, honey. I know it's all seems a bit voyeuristic, but just remember that it's in a good cause. We're simply making sure that our daughter is being cared for properly."
Karen was getting a sinking feeling, knowing that there was nothing that she could do or say that would keep her husband from watching this. 'Yes, but . . ."
Even in his sorry state, Adam managed to chuckle a little at what seemed like a huge overreaction from his wife. Hitting the play button, he told her, "If you're right about this girl, I'm sure I'll sleep a whole lot better at night after I've seen this."
His wife was trembling now though, actually wincing as the recording started to play on the TV screen.
Adam had obviously switched his little spy camera on right after Lacey arrived on their doorstep as the very first thing to appear on the screen was him walking across the living room to let the eighteen year old girl in out of the frosty night. The only thing to see here however was his wife and daughter greeting the girl in the friendliest manner possible while he eyed her cautiously, so he went ahead and hit the fast forward button.
Given that he and his wife had stayed out for about three hours the previous night, Adam was not about to try to sit there and watch this in real time, especially not in the condition he was in, so he would make good use of that fast forward button that morning, switching back to normal speed every so often.
As they progressed through the evening, all that ever materialized on the television screen seemed perfectly innocent. They were able to watch as Lacey played with Daisy, read her stories, and generally cared for her like she was her own child. Never once did she abuse, neglect, or molest her tiny charge. When the hour they had specified as their daughter's bedtime eventually arrived, they were able to watch as the babysitter put the child to bed just as she promised she would. Since Lacey could not possibly have known that she was being spied on, Adam had to grudgingly admit that she was taking very good care of his little girl.
While the husband clearly liked what he was seeing, it was odd that the wife seemed to be getting more and more alarmed by the moment.
Now came the second part of the night, when Lacey merely had to hold down the fort until Mr. and Mrs. Dubois came home. With nobody there to see what she was doing, now was the time when Adam thought she might be tempted to get into things she shouldn't and maybe even swipe some stuff, but it simply didn't happen. What their babysitter mostly did was watch a little TV and do a little reading. The handful of times she actually did disappear from the screen, it was very obvious that Lacey had just paid a visit to the bathroom, gone into the kitchen for something to drink, or peeked into Daisy's room to make sure she was all right. Yet again, Adam could not deny the evidence and was forced to admit that the teenager was doing nothing wrong.
Since everything they were seeing seemed to exonerate Lacey and prove that she well deserved the high opinion Karen held of her, one might have imagined that the housewife would have started to relax now, to calm back down.
If anything though, the opposite was true. Karen seemed to be growing more anxious and agitated by the moment! Given that Adam was so completely focused on battling the misery of his hangover and keeping an eye on what was happening on the screen, it was probably understandable that he should not have been aware of what was happening right beside him, but oddly enough his wife looked like she was right on the verge of a panic attack.
