I let my eyes follow the molding until it reaches the corner where the hallway ends. It is less than ten feet away. It is there that I see a small monitor.

“What do you mean, Alice? Why were you looking at the ceiling?”

“They’re everywhere,” she answers.

“What are everywhere?” I ask.

She glances again. “The eyes.”

A second chill comes and goes.

“What eyes?” I look again at the monitor. It looks like a motion detector for an alarm system. But I know there is no alarm that he sets. I study his movements when he comes and goes. The panel would be by the front door. He never stops there. I never hear the sound they make when they are about to be armed. We’ve had an alarm in our house for years.

But then I see something in the small box. A red light.

Alice lets my brain process what I’ve just seen. She can tell by my face that I have seen it.

“Dolly’s eyes,” she says.

“Dolly?” I ask. Then I remember. “The doll in your toy room? The old doll that sits on the shelf?”

She nods slowly. “Dolly has eyes all over the house. She sees everything and hears everything and she tells him everything.”

I hold my breath to keep from crying out.

The red light. I think where else I have seen one. I don’t turn away, but I count the places in my head.

The playroom next to Dolly.

The living room in the corner that faces the front door.

The dark room.

This hallway.

The corner of my bedroom.

I ease the air out of my lungs, then take more in to slow my pulse.

“I see.” This is all I can manage to say.

So he is watching us, always. I think about the day I went for a walk. It was not a coincidence that he came home in time to stop me. He knew I had left because he saw me leave.

The cameras are everywhere.

And the cameras are feeding to him live. There is Internet here, somewhere.

“Go get your schoolwork, then. We don’t want to break any more rules.”

Alice leaves and I turn my face from the camera in my room. I feel tears wanting to come but they will cause my body to tremble and he will know. He will see.

He watches me sleep. He watches me sleep with Alice. That is why he leaves us alone in this house together.

He sees everything.

Alice returns. She lays out her work and gets started. She can see that I am upset.

“Oh, don’t be scared!” she says. “You don’t need to worry.”

I regain my composure.

“Why is that, Alice?” I ask her.

“Because Dolly can see that you’re being a very good mommy.”

I smile. And inside, the defiance grows tenfold.