Charlotte’s car would arrive.

Within half an hour, the cameras would be manually shut off.

Three or four hours would pass in darkness.

And then everything would come back online, tidy and complete, the record seamless.

It had happened again, and again, and again.

This was not a lapse.

It was not a mistake.

It was a procedure — practiced, refined, and repeated — and it had been running in my home, around my child, for a very long time.