The Nanny Said, "Check Your Security Cameras"

CHAPTER 3 - THE ROOM WITH NO WINDOWS

The old music room smelled of dust, wood polish, and years nobody wanted to remember.

Emily had only been inside once before, the week she started working for the Whitakers. The piano was covered. The curtains stayed shut. There were no toys, no books, no reason for two little boys to be in there.

Except punishment.

Grant unlocked the door with the silver key. Theo refused to step over the threshold. Noah buried his face against Emily's side.

Inside, one chair lay on its side.

A child's sneaker sat beneath it.

Emily recognized it immediately. Theo had been crying over that missing shoe at lunch. Sabrina had said he was making things up.

Grant bent down and picked it up with a hand that had gone unsteady.

"What happened in here?" he asked.

Neither boy answered at first.

Emily crouched in front of them. "You can tell the truth now," she said. "Your dad is listening."

Theo looked at his father, then at the room. "She said if we told, you'd send us away."

Grant went still. "Send you where?"

"Back to school all the time," Noah whispered. "Or somewhere else. She said you were tired of us."

The words seemed to strike deeper than any accusation against Sabrina.

Emily knew enough of the family to understand why. Grant's wife, the boys' mother, had died eighteen months earlier. Since then, grief had moved through the house like bad weather. Boarding school had been discussed by relatives, then rejected. Emily had heard fragments, never from Grant himself.

Sabrina stepped into the doorway.

"This is getting ridiculous. Children say things when they're upset."

Grant turned on her. "Did you lock my sons in this room?"

Her face hardened. "I was trying to discipline them. They're wild, Grant. They hit, they scream, they cling to staff as if that is normal."

Staff.

That word did it.

Emily rose. "They cling to me because someone should have protected them."

Sabrina's eyes flashed. "You crossed every line in this house."

"I crossed one," Emily said. "I refused to leave them alone with you."

Grant stared at her then, as if hearing the full meaning for the first time.

"Why didn't you come to me?" he asked.

Emily hesitated.

Because every time I tried, she was there.

Because grief had made you absent even while you stood in the room.

Because I was afraid you'd choose peace over truth.

But before she could answer, the housekeeper spoke from behind them.

"Sir, there is another camera," she said. "Not yours. A nursery camera Miss Emily hid in the playroom after last week."

Sabrina took one step backward.