Chapter 2 - FORTY MINUTES BEFORE THE ER
The roof hatch was outside my bedroom.
Technically, nobody was supposed to use it except contractors.
I had been climbing through it since I was thirteen.
Our house sat on a hill in Greenwich, Connecticut, where the rooftops dropped toward rows of maples, slate chimneys and expensive homes pretending not to compete with one another.
Golden hour made all of it look honest.
I liked photographing things that looked better from far away.
That afternoon, I was testing video settings for my junior-year documentary project.
The assignment was called Home.
Our teacher wanted five minutes about a place we knew intimately.
My classmates planned to film kitchens, soccer fields, grandparents.
I wanted to film our house without people.
Doors.
Empty rooms.
Reflections in windows.
The roof.
Places where a family existed without having to perform being a family.
I was recording when Victoria climbed through the hatch.
I heard her shoes first.
“Give me the camera.”
I turned.
“What?”
She closed the hatch behind her.
“Dad knows.”
My stomach tightened.
“Knows what?”
“Stop.”
She advanced.
I backed toward the flatter section near the chimney.
“I’m doing homework.”
“Where’s the June card?”
I understood immediately.
Five months earlier, Victoria had graduated high school.
Our parents threw a party for eighty people.
There was champagne for adults.
Beer near the pool.
Music until midnight.
Around one-thirty in the morning, Victoria took Dad’s Range Rover.
I went with her because she said she was going to pick up food.
She had been drinking.
I told her not to drive.
She laughed.
We made it less than a mile.
She took a curve too fast and hit a low stone wall beside an empty property.
No one else was hurt.
I hit the passenger door hard enough to injure my arm.
Victoria split her lip.
The SUV was badly damaged.
Dad arrived before a tow truck because Victoria called him instead of police.
Within twenty minutes, he had decided what happened.
No police.
No questions.
No hospital until the next morning.
We had been “walking near the pool.”
I had “fallen from a bicycle earlier in the day.”
Victoria had “cut her lip on a cabinet.”
And the Range Rover had been damaged when Dad “misjudged the driveway wall.”
My mother, Marianne, stood in the garage listening.
She said nothing.
Neither did I.
The camera had been with me that night.
I carried it everywhere.
I remembered photographing the party.
I did not remember recording anything useful.
Two months later, while sorting old cards, I found a short clip.
Victoria standing beside the Range Rover before we left.
Car keys in one hand.
Champagne flute in the other.
Then another accidental clip inside the garage after the crash.
The camera had been left running inside my bag.
Mostly darkness.
Voices.
Dad:
“No one says she drove.”
Mom:
“Charles—”
Dad:
“Not tonight.”
Then Victoria crying.
Then Dad again:
“Eleanor fell earlier. That’s all anybody needs.”
I copied both files to my laptop.
Then to a cloud folder.
I did not tell anyone.
But somebody discovered I had the card.
Now Victoria stood on the roof.
“Dad wants it.”
“Then Dad can ask.”
“He did.”
“No, he sent you.”
Her eyes hardened.
“You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Act like you’re better because you’re quiet.”
I almost laughed.
“I don’t even know what that means.”
“It means you collect things.”
She pointed at the camera.
“Pictures. Screenshots. Little looks. Like you’re building a case against everyone.”
That was partly true.
Not because I planned to expose my family.
Because keeping evidence made me feel less crazy.
Victoria stepped closer.
“Delete the June files.”
“No.”
“Eleanor.”
“No.”
Then she shoved me.
Both hands.
Hard.
The world tilted.
My shoes scraped across the shingles.
I twisted.
The gutter came into view too fast.
I caught myself.
Barely.
My camera slammed against my ribs but remained strapped to my wrist.
Victoria approached.
Her face was white.
Not guilty.
Scared.
“Give it to me.”
I clutched the camera.
She grabbed my wrist.
“Dad will call it an accident.”
The camera’s red recording light blinked between us.
I saw her notice.
Her grip changed.
May you like
For the first time, she looked more frightened of the camera than of what she had almost done to me.
That was when I knew June had never really ended.
