They Entered My Bedroom While I Slept

"Camisoles. Little shorts.

Showing that much skin every single day, and you two aren't the only people in this house." I almost told my motherinlaw that what I wore inside my own bedroom was none of her business.

Then, a second later, the cold came crawling up my back. I only change into what I sleep in right before bed.

From the moment I change until I get up the next morning, I never leave the master bedroom. There was no way my motherinlaw had ever seen any of it.

So how did she know what I wore to bed every night? Chapter 1 My motherinlaw hadn't caught the hole in her own words. She just kept going. "This house isn't only the two of you.

Roger and Avery live here too.

Could you not show a little consideration?" I pushed every last bit of it down and nodded, keeping my face flat. "Got it." The meekness seemed to satisfy her, and her expression finally softened.

She produced a floral pajama set and held it out to me. "I had an old girlfriend of mine sew this for you.

The style's dowdy, I know, but it's real cotton, all the way through." "Wear this to bed from now on.

It'll wick the sweat right off you, and it sits close to the skin." It was a longsleeved, longlegged set engineered to kill sex appeal dead, coarse and heavy and completely wrong for a night in the middle of summer.

The house was old, with no ductwork anywhere in it, so the whole place ran on window units, and the one in the master bedroom was the only one that actually got cold.

And wasn't she reaching a little far here? Since when did what her daughterinlaw wore to bed fall under her jurisdiction?

Besides, the master bedroom my husband and I slept in had its own bathroom.

Once that door shut at night, it was our own little world, and even if I wore nothing at all, who exactly would that hurt? I said none of it out loud, of course.

I took the pajamas from her obediently and told her I'd wear them that very night.

When my husband, Kai, got home from work, I vented to him about how much of my life his mother was trying to run.

He looked helpless, and there was an apology in his voice. "Women my mom's age are just conservative.

She can't wrap her head around what younger people like." "But there's no meanness in her. She worries too much, that's all. Cut her some slack.

Don't take it to heart." I thought it over and figured he had a point. Living under the same roof as your inlaws always cuts both ways.

On the plus side, I never had to think about a meal or a load of laundry. On the minus side, everybody came with their own habits, and the friction was unavoidable.

I pushed the awkwardness down for the time being and decided to let the whole thing go.

At bedtime I looked at the camisole, then at the floral set, and put on the camisole without a second thought. The bedroom door was locked from the inside anyway.

The old bat couldn't see a thing. Kai came in carrying my bedtime milk. He looked at what I had on, seemed about to say something, and in the end said nothing at all.

I slept without dreaming. But the next morning at the breakfast table, my motherinlaw's face was as ugly as I had ever seen it. "Daphne!

Why aren't you wearing the longsleeved set I gave you yesterday? Are you flaunting yourself on purpose, you little sl—" She didn't get to finish.

Kai cut her off fast. "Mom!" She closed her mouth, and she wasn't happy about it. But that last word had already landed. It was too much.

That she would use a word that vicious about her own daughterinlaw. I slammed my fork down with a crack. "I'm in my own room all night. I don't come out once.

So how do you know what I'm wearing?" The question caught her flatfooted. "I— I guessed," she said, and her voice went tight.

I laughed, cold. "Why would you sit around guessing what I have on?

What I wear in my own bedroom is none of your business." "I've never said a word about you wandering through the living room in nothing but your underwear after every shower.

Where do you get off picking at me?" Her face went red, and she came back at me, furious and flustered at once. "Everybody in this house is family.

What's wrong with me dressing however I want after a shower? This is my house!" I caught the words the second they left her mouth. "So I don't count as family? This isn't my house?

I'm supposed to be covered head to toe in the bedroom I share with my own husband?" "You—" She stared at me, eyes blazing.

Chapter 2 The air in the dining room pulled tight as a wire. My fatherinlaw, Roger, jumped in to smooth it over. "All right, all right!

That's enough out of both of you!" He turned to his wife with clear disapproval. "You're a grown woman. What are you doing meddling in Daphne's business?

From now on, nobody brings up what anybody wears. Nobody." "We're family.

Don't tear up a perfectly good household over something this small." Under the table, Kai patted my hand to settle me.

My motherinlaw had been put in her place in front of everyone, and she was furious and swallowing it at the same time.

She shot a hard look at me and then at Roger, pressed her lips together, and said nothing more. The whole storm over the pajamas looked like it had blown itself out.

Then, the morning after that, I woke up to find two bruises on my arm that had no business being there. One of them was shaped almost exactly like fingerprints.

I held my own hand up against it, and the marks lined up like someone had taken my arm and twisted. At first I didn't make anything of it.

I figured I'd scratched at myself in my sleep. Kai and I were happy together, after all. He wasn't going to lie there and rough me up while I was unconscious.

Then I caught a smell coming off the bruise, and I knew it. That smell... I leaned in and sniffed again, working to place it. There it was. Bengay.

And the only person in this house who ever touched Bengay was my motherinlaw.

Her knees were arthritic, and now that summer was here the window units ran all day, so the cold air stiffened her joints until they ached.

She rubbed that stuff into her knees nearly every day, and the sharp medicinal reek never quite left her. I went straight to her. "Phyllis. These bruises on my arm.

Did you do that?" Something panicked flickered behind her eyes, and then her face closed like a door. "I did not! I didn't do a thing!

Don't you go accusing me out of thin air!" She was going to deny it to the grave, so I pressed in closer. "The bruise smells like Bengay.

You're the only person in this entire house who uses it, every single day.

Who else is it going to be?" That shut her up, but not for long. "You keep that bedroom door locked up tight every night. How would I even get in?

It's too early in the morning for you to be talking nonsense." Something occurred to me, and once it did I was sure of it. "You had a key made. That's what you did.

You had a key made to our room." The house was old, and the bedroom doors still had the original key locks.

You could push the button on the inside, and someone outside with a key could still let themselves in. But I kept both of our keys on me. She had to have gotten one cut on the side.

The miserable old bat. All that spite over nothing. She lost in the daylight, so she snuck into my room at night to get even. Kai heard us arguing and came in to back me up. "Mom.

How could you let yourself into our room while we're asleep? That's our privacy. You have no respect for it at all." "Hand the key over. Right now.

And there had better not be a next time." Her son's face was serious enough that she opened her mouth, closed it again with nothing to show for it, and finally dug out a key and surrendered it.

I started arranging for a second lock on our bedroom door right then. I wanted a slide bolt on the inside, no keyhole on the outside, nothing anybody could work from the hallway.

Otherwise I'd never feel safe in my own room again. Kai backed me all the way and had a locksmith at the house before the day was out. I thought that settled it.

Two days later I found one of my motherinlaw's black bobby pins at the corner of our bedsheet.

And I remembered clearly that when I straightened the sheets before bed the night before, that bobby pin had not been there. The cold shot up my back all over again.

She had been in our room again, and I never heard a sound? Chapter 3 This time I didn't go charging off to confront her. I made myself sit down and go back over all of it, calmly.

Why was my motherinlaw like a game of whackamole, always finding a way into my room no matter what I put in front of her? When she had a key, fine, that I understood.

But the slide bolt was on the door now. How was she still getting in? And there was something else I couldn't work out. What was she after in there?

Why was she so determined to get into that bedroom? Just to see what I slept in? Nobody was that bored. Besides, she wasn't a ghost. A person coming in and going out makes noise.

And she had twisted my arm hard enough to leave bruises like that. It would have hurt. It would have hurt a lot. So why hadn't I felt a thing? I've never been that deep a sleeper.

And even if I were, Kai is a light sleeper. How had he never noticed a thing? The questions kept stacking up in my head. Whatever was behind this, it wasn't simple.

There were too many things that didn't add up, and all of them pointed in the same direction: this house was keeping a secret from me.

So I decided to find a way to see for myself what happened in my bedroom after dark. I quietly ordered two miniature cameras online, both with night vision.

One went behind the clutter on the top shelf of the bookcase, the other wedged onto the ledge above the closet door frame, one high and one angled, the two of them covering opposite corners so the whole room was in frame with nothing left blind.

I kept every bit of it from Kai, of course. I was afraid he'd cover for his mother, tip her off somehow, and cost me my one shot at proof. Another quietlooking night went by.

The minute he left for work I went back to the bedroom, shut the door, and opened the app the cameras fed into. And what came up on that screen stopped me dead.

About fifteen minutes after I fell asleep, Kai leaned over and gave my shoulder a soft push, and I heard him say my name twice, low. "Daph? Daph