Chapter 8

Late that afternoon, another silent message warned me that we would be getting a visitor soon. Okay, Carl was coming to see his lover before seeing his family. Or rather, his former lover. I was sure that I could hear the anger in the ring of the doorbell. I turned to Hanna who was standing by the stairs.

"I'll take it."

I walked to the door and opened it while standing in the shadows by myself. Carl was playing with phone and rushed inside not noticing that it was me who opened the door.

"What a fuck is wrong with the door and your phone. I would have asked to you to take that little nuisance away for a moment as I'd like to have some fun."

Only then did he notice a pale Hanna standing by the stairs. Suddenly, he turned and saw me by the door. I loved the look on his face.

"Hi, Carl. It has been a while. More than a year, if I remember correctly. I guess you should know that I gave my two weeks notice to Helen, who promised to deliver it forward. I'm afraid that there's been some issues with the payment, and my lawyer will be discussing also about the holiday compensation."

It felt nice to see him opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.

"Another thing, is that I do not remember inviting you into MY house. I also insist that you not come to see MY wife or MY daughter any more. Ever."

It was a small wonder that nothing broke when he slammed the door closed on his way out. Hanna had been on the vurge of tears all that time. Once Carl departed, she started crying. I hugged her, and held her for a moment, until Emily who also had reacted to the slamming door required some attention. Hanna went to see her, and I retreated to the study. I could not resist one final act. I still had access to Kristin's computer, so I activated its camera. I made sure that the feed was both recorded, and fed live to the friends she had been chatting with, even if she tried to cut the connection. Once rebooted or later tonight whichever would happen first, all the software installed inside her computer would delete and overwrite itself on the disk, so as to be unretrievable. No use of taking any unnecessary risks!

I made my way upstairs and found both Hanna and Emily laying on our bed. I gave a wet kiss to both the girls which brought out a giggle from Emily and a careful smile out of Hanna. We played around in our bed for a moment and at some point Hanna turned to me.

"Joel, what are you up to do? I mean regarding him, Carl?"

"Nothing. I'm going to sit back and wait."

"I don't understand. After all he did to you - to us - I thought that you want to make him pay."

"Oh, he'll pay, for sure, but I have no intention of breaking the law myself."

She looked like she couldn't really believe me, but both Emily and me tickling her gave her something else to think about. It was not that I didn't trust her, but I really didn't feel comfortable telling her what I had planned for Carl. Or probably I just did not fully trust her - yet. I hoped that some day I would.

Later next day, when I looked at the video recorded inside Kristin's room that day, I didn't have to feel disappointed. I was not really worried about Helen or Kristin as they'd had an early warning about Carl soon enough to prepare for his return. What worried me a bit, was that I didn't really worry about them. Maybe I was no longer a good enough person to care about them ... or anybody else. On the video recorded by Kristin's laptop, you can first hear some yelling downstairs when Carl arrived home. At that point, Kristin tried to shut down the video. Due to an 'error' in the software, it refuses to do that, and instead starts recording to her own disk.