TEST STARED AT the video footage of the Village Fare restaurant hallway.
Now, here before Test, were the seventeen minutes she’d needed.
She watched it again and again, rewinding and fast-forwarding. Pausing. There. There it was. Again and again.
“The kids are waiting,” Claude said behind Test, startling Test and setting her heart skidding. “We’re going to be late if we don’t leave in five minutes. Elizabeth’s whining. She didn’t go down for her nap.”
“Her throat’s dry,” Test said absently as she clicked PLAY on the video again. Rewound it. “Did you pick up filters for her humidifier like you said you would?”
“I got busy. You could have done it, while you were out.”
“I would have if I’d known you weren’t going to, like we discussed.”
“We didn’t discuss it. You told me.”
She bristled. Rarely, only when truly upset and in the right, did Claude wield the truth with such a barbed tongue.
Still, how hard was it to get to the store? Now Elizabeth would be up half the night.
“We’ll grab them after the movie,” Claude said.
“Good.” Test sighed, glued to the CCTV footage.
“I’m dismissed then?” Claude said.
“Don’t be dramatic.” In her notebook, Test logged the time shown on the bottom right of the footage.
“We said we were going to salvage this evening after you got back.”
She spun around to look at her husband. “Please don’t make me feel worse.”
Claude stared at her. Did he think she enjoyed this, over spending time with her family?
“Go to the movies,” she said. “Enjoy the kids. At least one of us can. If I go I’ll just be anxious and not present anyway. You know that. Go.”
But he didn’t go.
“This isn’t even your case,” he said. “It isn’t even a case. The kid’s all but confessed. There’s heaps of evidence. I read the papers. You can put whatever it is aside for two hours.”
She wasn’t going to give in on guilt.
He saw that.
He turned and left, muttering: “Elizabeth didn’t nap because her dog is dead and her mom is AWOL, not because her humidifier is off.”
Test wanted to go after him, apologize, but what she saw on her screen kept her seated.