The Baby Monitor That Sang

At three a.m., the baby monitor started singing.

You wake up all at once, the way parents do: body up before the mind catches up. On the nightstand, the little red light is on. It only lights up when the mic picks something up.

Someone is humming.

Soft. A little too slow. A woman's voice, maybe, or a voice trying to be one. It isn't really singing, it's humming, mouth closed, with a faint breath that crackles in the speaker.

You switch on the screen. The black-and-white picture takes a second to come through. In the nursery, your daughter is asleep. On her back, arms above her head, like always. Alone. The door is shut. The corner of the rug, the dresser, the mobile hanging still. No one.

And yet, the voice keeps going. Right up against the mic. So close you can hear the breaths between the notes.

· · ·

Then you recognize the tune.

It hits you in the chest before you understand why. It's the lullaby your mother used to sing you. Not a real song: one she made up herself, one night when you had a fever, and kept singing for years. Nobody else knows it. You've never sung it to your daughter. You've never sung it to anyone.

The voice stops halfway through a word.

Silence. The crackle of the speaker.

And it whispers your childhood nickname. The one nobody has called you in twenty years.

· · ·

You rip the plug out. The light goes dark. The screen goes black.

Silence.

You sit on the edge of the bed, heart in your throat, listening to the house. Nothing. The fridge downstairs. A car far away. You get up, walk to your daughter's room, ease the door open. She's asleep. She hasn't moved. Everything's fine.

You close the door softly. You go back to bed.

Then, out in the hallway, right behind your door…

someone picks up the lullaby.

Exactly where it left off. Halfway through the word.

This time, it isn't singing to your daughter.

It's singing to you. Just like before.