…”he’s going to ask you to send a photo from the bedroom. Don’t. The camera can’t see the back door. Walk Penny like normal. I’ll meet you at the corner.”
My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped my phone. I typed back to Brian: “All good! Penny had an accident on the rug, had to clean it up. Heading out now.”
A few seconds passed. “Send me a picture of the bedroom.”
I didn’t. I clipped Penny’s leash on, smiled at nothing, and walked out the front door at my usual pace, like I’d done a hundred times. I took her down the block, the way we always go. At the corner, Claire was waiting behind a hedge in a gray hoodie, holding a backpack. She’d gone out through the back door and over the fence.
She got into my car, and Penny jumped in after her, wagging her whole body, like she’d been waiting for this. I didn’t know where to go. Claire did. “The police station on Fifth,” she said. “I’ve had the address memorized for a year.”
Brian texted me eleven times on the way. Then he called. I didn’t answer.
At the station, Claire told the officers everything. The cameras in every room. The rules about when she was allowed to be home. How she’d hidden in the closet whenever I came, because the camera couldn’t see inside it, just to have eighteen minutes where nobody was watching her. She’d been leaving me warm coffee cups on purpose. Hoping someone would notice.
She got an emergency protective order that night, and police removed the cameras from the house the next morning. Penny was hers, it turned out. She’d adopted her two years before she ever met Brian.
I stopped walking dogs for couples with cameras after that. Claire texts me sometimes, with pictures. Penny on a beach. Penny asleep on a new couch. Last week, a photo of Claire herself, laughing, with Penny in her lap. The caption said: “Walk took longer than usual today. Nobody asked why.”
