Ava’s Birthday Drawing Was Ruined While Everyone Blamed Lily — Then the Kitchen Camera Showed Who Really Scribbled Over It
Chapter 2 — The Boy Beside Grandpa
Claire paused the video.
“Ava.”
The little girl wiped her cheeks.
“Yeah?”
Claire pointed toward the partially visible figure beneath the black marker.
“Who is that boy?”
Ava looked confused.
“I don’t know.”
“Then why did you draw him?”
Ava pointed toward a stack of old photographs on the side counter.
Claire had brought them down from the attic that morning.
The family was preparing a slideshow for Grandpa Richard’s seventieth birthday.
Ava had chosen one photograph as inspiration.
She pulled it from beneath the pile.
Claire looked at it.
Her father, Richard, appeared to be about thirty years old.
He stood in front of a red farmhouse.
Beside him was a boy approximately eight or nine.
Claire had never seen the child before.
On the back of the photograph, someone had written:
RICHARD & BEN — SUMMER 1984.
Lily read it aloud.
“Who’s Ben?”
Claire shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
That alone was strange.
Claire knew almost every story from her father’s childhood and early adulthood.
She had never heard anyone named Ben mentioned.
Ava pointed toward the red house in the photograph.
“I liked that one, so I drew it.”
Claire looked at the ruined birthday picture again.
Matthew had apparently seen the photograph.
Then deliberately covered the boy and the house.
He hadn’t been angry at Ava.
He had been trying to hide something she had copied.
Claire immediately called him.
Matthew didn’t answer.
She called again.
Voicemail.
Then Lily noticed something else on the kitchen recording.
“Mom, rewind.”
Claire did.
After Matthew ruined the drawing, he picked up the original photograph.
He turned it over.
Then slipped it into his jacket pocket.
Claire looked down at the photograph currently in her own hand.
She froze.
“This isn’t the original.”
It was a photocopy.
Someone had already replaced the real photograph.
