By the fifth night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I lay there staring at the ceiling, waiting. And then again—the creak, the footsteps, the soft click of the door.
I got up and went back to his room. This time I heard a little more clearly. Susan was saying something like, “It’s going to be okay, don’t panic,” and he answered in a voice that sounded shaky.
Was he crying? I stood there like an idiot while my mind ran wild. What exactly was going on between them?
Was my wife—mother of my daughters, grandmother to two little boys—having an affair with our son-in-law? Under my roof? It sounded insane. But what else was I supposed to think?
Katie, our younger daughter, was away on a work trip at the time. She worked for a regional marketing firm and traveled now and then. She’d left ten days earlier and wasn’t due back for another week.
So Mike was alone, and Susan was going into his room every night. Coincidence? I tried to tell myself yes, but doubt gnawed at me like a rat in the walls.
The next morning, after Susan left for the grocery store, I went into Mike’s room. He was at his desk, headphones on, typing away. He turned, saw me, and took them off.
“Need something, Victor?” he asked politely, but there was tension in his voice. I looked at him.
Just an ordinary guy. Thin, glasses, pale face, needed a shave. Tired-looking. Nothing remarkable. But I could feel anger starting to boil up in me.
“Everything okay with you?” I asked, trying to sound casual. “You seem off lately.” He flinched a little and looked away.
“Yeah. Just a lot of work. I’m tired.” “Sleeping okay?” I asked.
“I sleep. Why?” He looked at me carefully, and I thought: he knows I suspect something. Or maybe I was imagining that too.
I didn’t push it. Just nodded and left. But by then I’d made up my mind. I was going to find out the truth, one way or another.
That same day I went to an electronics store in the shopping center and bought a small security camera. The kid behind the counter—couldn’t have been older than twenty-five—showed me how to connect it to my phone and set it to record. It cost me $120, which wasn’t nothing on a fixed income.
But I didn’t care. I had to see with my own eyes what was happening between my wife and my son-in-law in my own house. That evening, I set up the camera.
Susan had gone out to a friend’s birthday dinner, and Mike was in his room as usual. I had about two hours. I picked a spot in the hallway across from his door.
There was an old shelf there with dusty figurines Susan had collected years ago. Little porcelain dancers, a deer, a few odds and ends. I shifted them around and tucked the camera behind the deer.
I aimed the lens at Mike’s door. The camera was small, black, about the size of a deck of cards. You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it.
I connected it to my phone, just like the salesman showed me. The app lit up with a clear view of the hallway, the door, part of the wall. Even in low light, the picture was decent.
I set it to record on motion. That was it. Trap set. I slipped my phone into my pocket and noticed my hands were shaking.
I felt sick with myself. Sixty-three years old, and I’d turned into some paranoid old man spying on his wife. But what choice did I have? Ask her directly?
She’d deny it. I could see that already. She was hiding something, and I needed to know what. That night I didn’t sleep.
I lay there watching Susan. She slept peacefully, breathing evenly, the lines in her face softened. My Susan.
I remembered a train ride we took back in the late ’80s, moving for one of my jobs. She sat by the window, watching the trees go by, humming under her breath. I looked at her and thought: that’s it. That’s my whole life right there…
