“And who, Mom?” Mia asked from beneath her blanket. “What about the internet man?”
The air in the living room seemed to freeze. Julia looked at her daughter. “The internet man?”
“Last week,” Mia said matter-of-factly. “When you were downstairs making coffee. He said he had to check the wires in my room because that’s where the ‘brain of the house’ was. He had a big clipboard and a blue shirt.”
Julia felt the blood drain from her face. Ten days ago. A technician from their service provider had called, claiming there was a “signal leakage” in the neighborhood. He had been polite. He had an ID badge. He had spent twenty minutes in Mia’s room while Julia was in the kitchen, distracted by a phone call and the mundane tasks of a Tuesday morning.
She had let a stranger into her daughter’s sanctuary. She had given him the time and the privacy to install a sophisticated, motorized recording and haptic feedback device.
