Chapter 2 - The Thing She Needed to Find
We reached the bedroom doorway and stopped cold.
Eleanor stood in the middle of the room, face drained white, one hand pressed flat against her chest like she was trying to hold her heart in place. The drawer sat open on the floor in front of her, and scattered around it were a dozen printed photographs.
All of her.
Every single one taken inside our bedroom, mid-search, hand buried in my clothes.
"What is going on?" Marcus said, looking from the photos to his mother and back to me.
"I set up a camera," I said, my voice calmer than I expected it to be. "After the third time she went through my things, I needed proof I wasn't imagining it."
Eleanor's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "You — you spied on me? In my own son's house?"
"You went through my drawer, Eleanor. Again. This is the fourth time."
Marcus crouched down and picked up one of the photos, studying it like it might explain itself. Then he looked up at me with an expression that made my stomach twist.
"You had no right to film her without asking," he said.
I stared at him, genuinely stunned. "She had no right to go through my things. Repeatedly. For a year."
Neither of us backed down. But before it could go further, Eleanor said something that knocked the wind right out of the argument.
"I was looking for something specific." Her voice had changed completely — quieter now, careful, almost fragile. "Something I needed to find before it was too late."
Marcus went rigid.
"Mom," he said slowly, like he already knew what was coming and was hoping he was wrong. "What are you talking about?"
She didn't answer him. But the look she gave him — not me, him — told me everything I needed to know without a single word being spoken.
May you like
This had never been about boundaries.
There was something in that bedroom she'd been hunting for. And judging by the color draining from Marcus's face, he already knew exactly what it was.
