Chapter 15: The Dot on the Map

Cora's POV

Lacey stood in the hall in a rain-wet cardigan with her phone held out in both hands.

She had no peppermint tin, and her lips were cracked.

"Come in," I said, with a sweater pulled on over nothing else.

She came in and did not sit.

"It's called a family locator," she said. "Grady put it on your phone the week you remarried."

"When did he touch my phone?"

"When you were in the shower. He put it on mine too, and he gave me the login."

She turned the screen toward me.

A blue dot sat on a map of Fifth Street, on top of the bakery.

"I'm the one who checks it," she said. "Every night at nine and every morning at six, and I text him where you are."

Marshall stood very still by the kitchen counter.

"Why are you telling us this?" he asked.

"Because it's five in the morning, and for four months I texted him 'Maple Court' and 'Willow Run' and 'the library.'"

"And last night I typed 'Fifth Street' to him, and I could not make my thumb press send."

She looked at me.

"That's the first thing I've ever not done for him."

I did not say it was all right.

It wasn't, and I think she would have thought less of me if I had.

"What else?" I said.

Lacey put the phone on the table.

"The paper I signed in the judge's study, a week after your wedding."

"The codicil," Marshall said.

"He told me it was a birthday letter for our grandfather's old drivers."