Good References

Ben didn't want to fire her. I need to be honest about that part, because it matters for everything that came after.

"Her references are spotless," he said that night, after Theo was finally asleep, his voice pitched low and careful the way it gets when he's trying to sound reasonable instead of scared. "Three families, all glowing. We interviewed six nannies before her, Rachel. We can't just start over from nothing with both of us back at work Monday."

"She had our son's face in the mattress."

"She said it was a technique. Maybe it was clumsy, maybe it looked worse than it was—"

"I was there, Ben. I saw his face."

He didn't argue with that, not exactly. He just got quiet in the way he does when he's choosing which fight to have, and by the end of the conversation what we'd landed on wasn't firing her. It was a hidden camera, tucked into a bookshelf teddy bear in the nursery, the kind of compromise that let both of us feel like we were doing something without either of us having to say out loud what we were actually afraid of.

I told myself it was reasonable. Document first, decide after. I even almost believed it.

The camera synced to an app on my phone by Thursday. I opened it for the first time on my lunch break, three days after the crib, telling myself I'd watch ten minutes and go back to charting.

I watched the whole four hours instead, and by the end of it my hands wouldn't stop shaking long enough to type a single word into Theo's chart.