What My Camera Caught

I didn't go down those last three stairs.

I backed up instead, one riser at a time, my socked feet finding the edges I already knew from sixteen years of avoiding the creaky spots without thinking about why. In my room I locked the door, which we weren't supposed to do, according to house rule number one that Corinne had typed and laminated and taped to the fridge.

I opened the photo. My hand was shaking enough that I had to hold the phone with both.

It wasn't a video, just the one frozen frame the flash had caught before I killed the app. Junie on her knees on the tile. A stainless bowl, the kind you'd clip to a cage. Corinne standing over her, one hand on the back of a kitchen chair, not touching Junie, never touching Junie — that was the thing about Corinne, she never needed to touch you to make a point.

Someone knocked. Not hard. Corinne-hard, which meant soft enough to sound patient.

"Wynn? Can I come in?"

"I'm changing," I said, which came out steadier than I felt.

"Just wanted to say goodnight." A pause, exactly two seconds, the length she always gave things she wanted you to sit with. "Junie had a little accident with her dinner. She's fine. Kids are dramatic."

I didn't answer. I heard her wait one more second, then her footsteps going, unhurried, back down the hall.

I sat on my bed and looked at the photo until the numbers on my clock rolled over twice. Then I did the thing that would matter most, later, though I didn't know it yet — I didn't delete it, and I didn't send it. I made a folder. I named it something boring, "Bio Notes," buried three folders deep where Corinne's occasional phone-checks would never think to look.

At 11:40, my door handle turned. Just turned — slow, testing, the lock catching with a small click that Corinne, on the other side, would have heard exactly as clearly as I did.