Chapter 5: Post It

"Turn it off," I said.

Nolan pressed the button, and my mother's face went dark.

I stood in the middle of the cabin in his borrowed wool socks with my arms wrapped around myself.

"She told a news camera I'm sick," I said.

"She told a news camera what Brooke wrote for her."

"It's the same thing."

"It's not. One of them has a reason."

I sat down at his desk, where my phone was charging off a battery pack, and woke it up.

It had forty-one percent and a hundred and nine messages.

Most were from numbers I didn't know.

A few were from the girls in my dental office, who had seen the news.

One was from Trevor.

It said, "Delete what you recorded and I'll make this go away."

I screenshotted it.

"What are you doing?" Nolan said.

"Making sure I don't have to say it twice."

Three weeks ago, sitting in my car outside Trevor's building, I had taken photos of his second phone with my own.

Eleven photos.

The folder name. The thumbnails. The file dates, going back to March of last year.

One photo showed a message Brooke had sent him on the day he proposed to me.

It said, "Make it a good one. People cry harder at the proposal. Ring on camera."

I had never posted any of it.

I had saved it in a hidden album and gone to work every morning like a woman with a plan.

Now I opened an account I hadn't touched in two years, with forty-six followers, mostly high school friends.

I uploaded the recording from the gravel lot, Brooke saying cry a little, and Trevor laughing, and my own voice saying I ended it three weeks ago.

Under it I put the eleven photos.

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