Chapter 3
We spent the next three hours searching the house.
Every room. Every closet. Every drawer.
Every vase. Every clock. Every picture frame.
Everything Evelyn had ever given us.
And we found them.
The bugs.
Small. Black. Hidden everywhere.
In the living room. In the kitchen. In the dining room.
In both guest rooms. In the office. In the hallway.
Even in the bathroom.
Thirteen bugs total.
Thirteen places where Evelyn had planned to listen to our most private moments.
Mark looked more and more devastated with each one we found.
"She gave us this clock for our first anniversary," he said, holding up a bug he'd pulled from the back of it. "I thought... I thought she was being nice."
He shook his head.
"I can't believe this," he said. "All these years. All these gifts. And she was using them to spy on us."
I put my hand on his arm.
"She's sick, Mark," I said. "This isn't normal. This isn't what a mother does. She needs help."
Mark nodded, but I could see the hurt in his eyes.
He loved his mother.
And finding out she had been spying on him for years...
It was devastating.
We put all the bugs in a plastic bag.
Mark took photographs of everything.
The shattered vase. The bugs. The remote control.
The red mark on his cheek where she had slapped him.
"Just in case," he said.
I knew what he meant.
Just in case we needed evidence.
Just in case this went further.
That night, after the movers had left and the boxes were mostly unpacked, we sat in the living room.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
Mark was staring at the plastic bag full of bugs.
"I keep thinking about all the conversations we had," he said quietly. "All the things we said. All the private moments. And she was listening. All that time."
He looked at me.
"Do you think... do you think she heard us talking about the baby?"
I felt my stomach drop.
We had been trying to have a baby for months.
We had talked about it constantly.
About names. About the future. About our hopes and fears.
And Evelyn had been listening.
"She probably did," I said softly.
Mark's face hardened.
"That's it," he said. "This stops now. She's not going to get away with this. She's not going to ruin our lives. Not anymore."
He stood up.
"I'm calling a lawyer tomorrow," he said. "We're going to press charges. We're going to get a restraining order. Whatever it takes. She's never going to hurt us again."
I nodded.
"Okay," I said.
But I was scared.
I had seen the look in Evelyn's eyes.
The rage. The hatred.
She wasn't going to go away quietly.
She was going to fight.
And I had a feeling it was going to get worse before it got better.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
I lay in bed, listening to Mark's breathing.
He was asleep.
But I was wide awake.
I kept thinking about the vase flying toward my head.
About the bugs hidden throughout the house.
About Evelyn's face when she realized she'd been caught.
About the way she had slapped her own son.
And I knew.
This was war.
And Evelyn was going to do everything in her power to destroy us.
But I also knew something else.
I wasn't going to let her.
This was my home.
My marriage.
My future.
And I was going to fight for it.
May you like
With everything I had.
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