Fueled by paranoia and Beatrice’s whispers, I spent $100,000 the next day. I had a security team install top-of-the-line infrared surveillance cameras throughout the house—hidden in smoke detectors, behind bookshelves, and focused directly on the twins’ cribs.
I didn’t tell Elena. I wanted proof. I wanted to catch her in the act of negligence so I could purge my home of yet another failure.
For two weeks, the cameras recorded. And for two weeks, I avoided the footage. I buried myself in work, terrified of what I might see.
But one rainy Tuesday at 3:00 a.m., the insomnia that had become my constant companion forced me awake. The rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows of my bedroom like angry ghosts.
I reached for my tablet. I opened the secure app. My finger hovered over the icon labeled NURSERY.
I expected to see her asleep on the job.
I expected to catch her rifling through the drawers.
I tapped the screen. The feed loaded in grainy, high-definition green.
And my breath stopped.
The night-vision footage showed Elena sitting on the floor between the two cribs. She wasn’t sleeping. She wasn’t on her phone.
She was holding Leo—the fragile, screaming twin—pressed against her bare chest. Her shirt was unbuttoned at the top to allow for skin-to-skin contact, the very method Seraphina had once read to me from a parenting book, explaining how it regulated a distressed baby’s heartbeat.
But that… wasn’t the shock.
The camera captured a subtle, steady motion. Elena was rocking gently, back and forth, her eyes closed in exhaustion but her hold firm. And she was singing.
The audio feed was crisp. She was humming a tune.
It wasn’t a generic nursery rhyme. It was a complex, haunting melody in a minor key.
I froze. My hands began to shake uncontrollably.
That was Seraphina’s song. It was a lullaby she had been composing in the months before the birth. She had never written it down. She had never recorded it. She had only played it on her cello late at night, in the privacy of our bedroom, while I lay with my head in her lap.
How? I thought, my mind reeling. How does this stranger know the song of my dead wife?
I watched, mesmerized and terrified, as Leo’s rigid little body finally relaxed. He let out a soft sigh, melting into her warmth.
Then, on the screen, the nursery door handle turned.
Elena’s eyes snapped open. She didn’t look surprised. She looked… prepared.
The door creaked open, and Beatrice stepped inside.
My sister-in-law was wearing a silk dressing gown. She didn’t look like the concerned aunt she played during the day. She moved with a stealth that set my teeth on edge. In her right hand, she held a small, silver dropper bottle.
She didn’t acknowledge Elena. She moved directly toward Noah’s crib—the healthy twin.
Elena rose to her feet, still clutching Leo protectively against her chest.
“Stop, Beatrice,” Elena said.
Her voice carried through the audio feed—soft, shaking, yet edged with an unmistakable command I had never heard from her before.
Beatrice froze. She turned slowly, her face twisted in a sneer that the night-vision camera rendered into a grotesque mask.
“Excuse me?” Beatrice hissed. “I am giving my nephew his vitamins. Go back to sleep, you little rat.”
“I already swapped the bottles,” Elena said, her voice trembling but resolute. “The bottle in your hand? It’s plain water. I poured the rest down the sink an hour ago.”
