Chapter 7 — Why Sophie Disabled the Camera
Richard still needed to know how far Sophie had gone.
They sat inside the guesthouse.
Jasper lay between them.
“Did you disconnect the camera?”
Sophie nodded.
“How?”
“I unplugged the network adapter.”
Richard stared at her.
“How did you know which one?”
Sophie looked almost offended.
“You labeled it.”
Richard made a mental note to reconsider his labeling system.
“Why disable it?”
“Because you’d see Jasper.”
“Correct.”
“And then you’d make me take him back.”
“You didn’t know that.”
Sophie went quiet.
Richard waited.
Finally she admitted something else.
She had not only feared Jasper being returned.
She feared Richard would dismiss her concern without listening.
“Why?”
Sophie looked at him.
“Because sometimes you decide what happened really fast.”
Richard frowned.
Then remembered Ethan in the kitchen.
That hurt.
Sophie continued.
Two months earlier, she had told Richard a teacher lost one of her assignments.
Richard assumed Sophie forgot to submit it.
The teacher later found it inside another student’s folder.
Three weeks after that, Sophie said her phone screen broke because it fell from a loose shelf.
Richard assumed she dropped it and didn’t want to admit it.
Later he discovered the shelf bracket was actually broken.
“You always apologize afterward,” Sophie said.
“But first you decide.”
Richard did not enjoy hearing that.
Because it was true.
He managed a large construction company.
At work, quick decisions mattered.
Problems needed owners.
Delays needed explanations.
He had brought the same instinct home.
Find what looks wrong.
Identify the likely cause.
Act.
But families were not construction schedules.
Teenagers were not incident reports.
“You still should have told me,” Richard said.
Sophie nodded.
“I know.”
“Being afraid I won’t listen doesn’t give you permission to steal an access card.”
“Borrow.”
Richard stared at her.
“Do not negotiate terminology right now.”
Sophie sighed.
“Fine.”
“And it definitely doesn’t give you permission to dump the card somewhere another person could be accused.”
Her expression changed.
“I really didn’t mean for Ethan to get blamed.”
“I believe you.”
Then:
“But when you realized the card itself could expose you, you made it somebody else’s problem.”
Sophie looked down.
That was the part she could not defend.