Chapter 2 - The Camera Never Lies
The dining room descended into a graveyard silence so heavy you could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.
Gwen blinked, her smug expression faltering for a split second before she recovered her defensive sneer. "What? What are you glaring at me for, kid? I’m just being realistic."
Liam didn't blink. At ten years old, he possessed an observational maturity that frequently startled me, but right now, his eyes held the cold, unyielding focus of an investigator. He reached down, picked up the digital camera, and tapped a few buttons on the back LCD screen before turning the device around to face the table.
"You aren't worried about the photos being ruined, Aunt Gwen," Liam said, his voice crystal clear and entirely devoid of childish stutter. "You're worried that nobody is looking at you."
Gwen scoffed, though a nervous flicker crossed her eyelids. "Excuse me? I am the one who organized the shoots—"
"No," Liam interrupted, cutting her off with chilling precision. "You spent the entire vacation taking double photos of yourself while making Maya stand in the shadows, and when Dad tried to snap a family portrait where Maya looked happy, you photobombed the frame every single time because you couldn't stand the idea of not being the center of attention."
I stared at my son in sheer astonishment. I hadn't realized how closely Liam had been monitoring Gwen’s narcissistic antics on the trip.
Gwen’s face flushed a mottled, angry red. "Oh, please. Give me the camera, you little brat. You're just making things up because you're upset I spoke the truth about your sister's skin conditions—"
"I'm not making anything up," Liam said calmly, stepping away from his chair and walking over to the side counter where my laptop sat plugged into a portable multi-port hub. "And I have proof. Because unlike you, Aunt Gwen, I didn't delete my outtakes."
Before Gwen could lunge across the table to stop him, Liam plugged the camera's memory card reader directly into the USB port. With a few swift keystrokes, he opened the master folder of raw, unedited image files on the large screen.
"Let's look at why you were really so mad about Maya's photos," Liam announced to the room.
He clicked open a high-resolution file taken on our third day in Destin. It was a shot Gwen had violently demanded we delete on the spot. In the background of the image, half-hidden behind a beach umbrella, Gwen wasn't posing for a casual vacation snap.
She was standing close—alarmingly close—to a tall, broad-shouldered man with sun-bleached hair, clutching his arm with a desperate, familiar intimacy. And the man wasn't her husband, David, who was currently back in Columbus running his architectural firm.
Gwen froze. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like a corpse under fluorescent lights.
"What... what is that?" I whispered, my gaze snapping from the screen back to my sister. "Gwen... who is that man?"
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Gwen snatched her purse off the floor with shaking fingers, her breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. "That... that's nothing! It's a trick! The kid edited that, he's lying—"
"I didn't edit anything," Liam said coldly, pulling up a second file. "And I didn't just catch you on the beach, Aunt Gwen. I also caught the phone calls."
