So I had set up an app on the smart speaker in the living room — a dictation program that synced continuous audio to a secure cloud drive whenever it detected raised voices.

It was meant, at first, only to protect me from being called a liar.

I never imagined how much it would end up holding.

But it had been running, quietly, in that house for months, and it had been running that night.

When I gave the detectives the login credentials, and they opened the drive, they found the raw, unedited record of everything: Celina’s voice and the sounds in that kitchen; Garrett refusing, flatly, to get me to a hospital; and the three of them in the living room afterward, laughing over cake while they planned the story they would tell about the stairs.

It was all there.