Daniel woke her phone. No password. He stepped into his daughter’s world and scrolled through her messages. Nothing save for midafternoon pleas for rides home or messages to one parent demanding the location of the other. Only two names appeared in her message list—his and Kelly’s. His brow furrowed. Where were the messages from her friends? They had to be chatting elsewhere.

Daniel hunted for social media. Their conversations about the dangers of social media seemed to have worked; she had nothing installed. No strange phone numbers. No Google searches to raise concerns. Milly’s phone was proving as much a closed book as she was.

He had one last place to check. Her photos. He thumbed through them, stunned at what he found.

Milly didn’t appear in any of them. Neither did anyone at school.

A constant loop of photos featuring her parents crushed his expectation of an endless roll of selfies. Every photo showed him and Kelly together. His thumb scrolled through her memories. Even when they were in the same room but not in the same conversation, Milly found a way to take a photo of them together, and then she linked them with overlaid hot-pink love hearts or smiling emojis.

Daniel’s thumb skidded to a halt. The altercation with Monique was also featured on Milly’s phone, but she had cropped out Monique. Kelly, frozen mid-sentence in a moment of attack, was now talking to Daniel.

Daniel sank onto the end of Milly’s bed. What type of kid took a hundred photos, none of them featuring herself? What type of kid never shared them? Did she lie in bed at night flicking through photos that showed her family happy? Was there something more to her than failing grades? The lack of evidence that she was a normal kid waved a red flag.

Downstairs the front door slammed, and Daniel dropped the phone. The one thing worse than snooping in Milly’s room was being caught snooping in Milly’s room. Daniel leaped to his feet, plugged in the phone, and then placed it next to her family photo, a time of genuine smiles. He had to find a way back there again.

As he closed Milly’s door silently behind him, he still had no answers. The price for breaching his daughter’s trust would be high, but the return was nothing. All he had left now was the camera.

Daniel laughed as he realized the insanity of that thought. Daniel Whiteley, with a master’s in counseling, bestselling author and counselor to thousands, now placed his trust in a magical camera?

*  *  *

Daniel again lifted the camera to his eye. “This time, how about Milly and Nan?”

His mother reached for her granddaughter, who scowled as Daniel peered through the viewfinder. “Smile, Milly!” She pasted on a fake smile that would have been at home on the couch in his office.

He squeezed the trigger with a satisfying clunk.