“Yeah,” I say, that familiar sting in my eyes.
After a couple of minutes, he starts to stir, and a few seconds later I see his door crack open, and I watch as I walk into his bedroom, leaning into his crib and picking him up. I plant a kiss on his cheek, bouncing him around and making him laugh, before we walk back out the door and leave the room empty behind us.
“I was hoping we might be able to see his window,” Waylon says, pointing at the screen. “But it doesn’t look like it. Not from this vantage point.”
“No,” I say. “The camera is mounted behind his crib, facing the door. The window is next to his crib, so it wouldn’t show up here.”
I click on the timer at the bottom of the video, fast-forwarding through a couple hours of empty room. Around midday, I watch as I drop Mason back off for a nap, then later that night, as I carry him over to his bookshelf, choose a story, and read it to him in a rocking chair in the corner, lulling him to sleep.
We’re both quiet for a while until I clear my throat, trying to push down the tears I can feel crawling their way up.
“Thanks for doing that,” Waylon says, his voice soft. “It was worth a shot. But hey, I’m going to bed. And you should, too. We’ll pick this up in the morning.”
I nod, give him a close-lipped smile, and watch as he stands up andputs his glass in the sink, slinking off down the hall and closing the door behind him. I hear the faint shuffles of movement in the guest room—pulling back his comforter, removing his clothes—and wait until the light clicks off, the crack underneath the door going dark.
I look again at my laptop—at Mason, now back in his crib. I could sit here for hours, watching him sleep.
I stand up with my laptop and make my way to the table, taking a seat. Then I click on the timer and drag it again, speeding through the night, watching Mason as he twitches in fast motion. The room grows darker, a gentle glow emitting from his nightlight in the corner, until suddenly, it starts to brighten up again. Daylight coming. Then, at six o’clock the following morning, the recording stops.
I lean back in my chair, thinking about what I just saw. It’s so simple—just a day; just a regular, normal day—but at the same time, so hard to process. It’s mind-numbing sometimes, thinking about how different my life is now. How lonely, with Mason’s nursery just an empty room collecting dust; a skeleton stripped of life.
I glance at the clock on my wall—one thirty a.m.—and back at my laptop, deciding to watch another.
I click on a random day, going back a couple of months, and watch again as my life unfolds before me like a dusty old carpet, getting unspooled after years of neglect. I do the same thing as before—watch the parts with Mason in them, fast-forward through the rest—and when that one is done, I choose another. I watch Mason as a newborn, so impossibly small, then decide to jump forward and watch as he teaches himself how to rock on his knees in his crib, getting stronger. These are the little moments that I had missed—the moments tucked behind a closed door, unfolding while I slept—but now, I don’t want to miss any of them. I don’t want to miss a second.
I’m on another video now—from early December, three months before he was taken—and watch as Ben rocks him to sleep this time. He’s whispering something into his ear, over and over, before walking him to his crib and resting him inside. I watch as he walks away,turns off the light, and I start to fast-forward again, getting ready for the timer to end and the video to stop—until suddenly, I catch a movement.
I pause the video and look down at the timer: 3:22 a.m. I look back at the frozen image, squinting, trying to figure out where the motion was coming from, and then I realize: It’s coming from the crack underneath his door. It’s coming from the hallway.
I start the video again and notice a subtle shadow moving across the door, like someone is out there, walking. Ben going to the bathroom, maybe, or grabbing a glass of water. But then I watch as the door slowly starts to open, and I see myself step inside.
Mason must have been crying, I think, even though he looks fast asleep. I tap the volume louder and hear nothing but his sound machine, a mild swishing, like pushing your ear into a conch shell and hearing your blood rush. I lean closer to the screen, hypnotized, as I see myself walk into his nursery, toward his crib—and then, suddenly, I stop moving.
“What am I doing?”
I say it out loud without even realizing because it’s so strange, watching myself like this. Seeing me standing in the middle of Mason’s bedroom, unmoving—and that’s when the memory hits me, hard.
My hand shoots to my mouth, stifling a gasp.
“What was I doing?”
Margaret and I, lying in bed, her cheek pushed into the pillow as she stared at me, eyes wide and afraid.
“Just standing there. Your eyes were open.”
I watch for another minute, waiting for my body to do something on-screen, but still, I don’t move. My feet are cemented in place; my eyes, open, staring straight ahead.
“It scares me when you do that.”
I want myself to move so badly; I want myself to do something,anything, other than just stand there, comatose. The whites of my eyes glowing in the camera like an animal caught in headlights. Finally,I can’t take it anymore. I click on the timer and start to fast-forward, watching as my rigid body sways in a jerky rhythm as the clock ticks forward.
3:45, 4:15, 4:45, 5:05.
Finally, at 5:43 a.m., I watch my body turn around and walk back into the hallway after two hours of standing in place, shutting the door behind me. Then I stare at Mason—asleep in his crib, oblivious to it all—for another seventeen minutes until the video cuts off and the screen goes black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THEN