When Martha’s mother-in-law insists on babysitting her daughter every Wednesday, she thinks it’s a harmless favor, until Bev starts acting strangely.
Desperate for answers, Martha installs a hidden camera… and what she discovers shatters her world.
Lies, manipulation, and betrayal run deeper than she ever imagined.
I wish I could say I was overreacting.
That I had let paranoia take hold of me, that my suspicions were just the byproduct of stress and exhaustion.
But I wasn’t crazy.
I wasn’t imagining things.
And I would give anything, anything, to have been wrong.
My name is Martha, and I have a four-year-old daughter, Beverly.
My husband, Jason, and I both work full-time, which means Bev spends most weekdays at daycare.
Look, I feel guilty enough, and it wasn’t my choice, but it worked.
She was happy, we were happy, and life moved along.
“Bev is going to be fine, love,” Jason said one morning as we were packing her lunch.
“I know, and she’s thriving.
She’s making friends, and she’s enjoying herself.
But… I don’t want her to think that she’s being ignored or pushed away by us, you know?”
But then, a month ago, my mother-in-law, Cheryl, made us an offer that seemed too generous to be true.
“Why don’t I take Beverly on Wednesdays?” she suggested over dinner, cutting into her chicken.
“It will give her a break from daycare and let us have some grandma-granddaughter bonding time.
It will be good!”
I hesitated.
“We can do it here so that she feels comfortable as well,” Cheryl continued.
“I mean, I can take Bev to the park or for ice cream, too.
But we’ll be home for most of it.
Okay?”
Cheryl and I had never been particularly close.
There was always a subtle disapproval in the way she spoke to me, a quiet undercurrent of something unspoken.
But this seemed… innocent.
It seemed like a kind gesture.
Like a grandmother who really just wanted to spend time with her grandchild.
Plus, it would save us a little money on daycare costs.