Chapter 3 - THE FIRST VIDEO
Two weeks before the graduation party, my cousin Lily sent Natalie a message.
DO YOU KNOW RYAN RECORDS PEOPLE?
Natalie showed me.
I called Lily.
“What do you mean?”
She hesitated.
“Like videos.”
“What videos?”
“He showed one at Grandpa’s.”
My father.
Thomas.
“What was on it?”
“Natalie.”
Natalie was standing beside me.
I put the phone on speaker.
Lily continued.
“She was at Uncle Thomas’s birthday dinner and said she wanted to leave.”
Natalie remembered.
Six months pregnant.
Swollen feet.
Headache.
We had already stayed three hours.
Ryan had apparently recorded twelve seconds on his phone.
Natalie saying:
“I am tired, Daniel. I want to go home.”
Then me:
“Okay.”
That was it.
“What did Ryan say about it?” I asked.
Lily went quiet.
“Lily.”
“He said Natalie controls where you go.”
I felt stupid.
Not because the clip proved anything.
Because people had been discussing my marriage like a sports replay.
“Who saw it?”
“Grandpa. Aunt Karen. Couple people.”
Natalie said:
“Was there more before the clip?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Lily answered:
“Ryan kept asking why you couldn’t stay for cards.”
Exactly.
The clip began after ten minutes of needling.
No crime.
No deepfake.
Just selection.
Ryan recorded the sentence that made Natalie look demanding.
Not the part that made it reasonable.
I confronted him.
“Stop recording my wife.”
He laughed.
“I record everything.”
“No.”
“It’s a phone, Dan.”
“Delete it.”
“Why? She said it.”
“That isn’t the point.”
He looked at me like I was proving his argument.
“She hates when anybody sees how she talks to you.”
Natalie was not present.
I said:
“This is not your marriage.”
Ryan answered:
“Exactly. We still get to have a brother.”
I told him again:
“Stop recording.”
May you like
He said he would.
I believed him.
