My stepmom invited me on a lakeside girls' trip so I could wait on her friends like the hired help—then Dad slipped something into her bag that flipped the whole weekend around.

Hardly anyone talked on the way back. Marlene rode up front in Sharon's car. I was crammed in the back seat between two duffel bags, watching the trees smear past the glass.

The group had split between two cars. Every few minutes I caught Sharon checking the mirror, glancing at Marlene like she was waiting for a pot to boil over.

It didn't. Not yet.

Marlene stared through the windshield the entire two-hour drive. The notebook sat in her lap. She hadn't set it down since the campsite.

When we turned into our driveway, Dad's truck was already there.

Marlene had the door open before Sharon fully stopped the car.

"Marlene—" Sharon started.

"I'll call you later."

She didn't.

I grabbed my bag and followed her up the walk. My stomach was in a knot. I still didn't know what my dad had actually seen. I didn't know if there really was a camera. All I knew for sure was what I'd written in that notebook, and every word of it had happened.

Dad was in the kitchen. Standing at the counter with a mug of coffee — not sitting, not flipping through the mail, just standing there. Waiting.

Marlene dropped her bag by the door.

"We need to talk."

"We do," Dad said. He put the mug down. "Nora, go on upstairs, please."

"She stays," Marlene snapped.

Dad looked at her. "Excuse me?"

"She stays. Whatever you think you saw, she can hear this too. I want her to hear exactly what I have to say about that little notebook of hers."

I didn't move.

Dad gave me the smallest nod. It's okay. Stay. I set my bag down by the stairs.

Marlene laid the notebook on the kitchen table like she was placing evidence.

"Where did you get this?"

"Nora wrote it," Dad said. "I found it in her room three weeks ago. She didn't know I'd read it."

Marlene's eyes cut to me. "You've been keeping a file on me."

"I wrote down what happened," I said. "That's all."

"That's all." She laughed, short and hard. "You wrote a chore list and dressed it up like I'm running a prison work camp."

"You told your friends I was good preparation for real life," I said. "Right after they called me your maid."

The laugh died in her throat.

Dad picked up the notebook. He opened it to a page somewhere in the middle and read out loud, quiet, flat, no drama in it at all.

"Day one. Got to the lake at three. Told to unload all the food, build the fire, set up six chairs. Her friends didn't help. Ate dinner with them, then told to clear the table and wash every dish before bed. Washed dishes in the dark with a flashlight."

He closed it.

"Marlene," he said. "There's no camera."

The kitchen went dead still.

She blinked. "What?"

"I never set up a camera. I made it up." He looked at her, steady. "I wanted to see what you'd do when you thought you'd been caught. Now I know."

Marlene's face moved through three things in about two seconds. Shock. Then anger. Then something colder and harder to name — something that looked a lot like a woman doing math.

"So this is a trap," she said.

"No. This is a conversation I should have started a long time ago."

She pulled her shoulders back. When she spoke again her voice had shifted — smoother, cooler, like she'd found solid ground.

"You want to talk about how I treat your daughter? Fine. Let's talk about how she's never once let me in. How she watches every move I make and writes it in a notebook like some junior detective. How she's made it impossible for me to feel welcome in my own home."

"This is my house," Dad said.

"And I'm your wife." She set the word down between them on purpose.

Dad didn't answer right away. He looked at the notebook. Then at me.

"Nora. Is everything in here true?"

"Yes."

Marlene turned all the way toward me. "You think you won something tonight, don't you?"

I didn't answer.

"You didn't," she said. "You just made things a whole lot harder for yourself."

Dad's jaw flexed. "Marlene—"

"No." She picked her bag back up off the floor. "I'm going to bed. We can finish this tomorrow, when everyone's calmed down."

She walked past me without another look. Her footsteps went up the stairs. The bedroom door didn't slam — it shut with a soft click, which somehow felt worse.

Dad and I stood in the kitchen with the notebook between us on the table.

"Dad," I said. "What did she mean, 'harder for yourself'?"

He picked up his coffee, realized it had gone cold, set it back down.

"I don't know yet," he said.