Chapter 5: The Phone Bill

The bill was slow to load, because I had to scroll back three years.

I did it at the workbench in my shop, with a chair upside down in the clamps and the radio off.

The account listed every call on both lines.

Mine was short and boring: the shop, Teddy, my mother on Sundays.

Lydia's line ran down the page, and one number came up again and again, a Portland cell with a 503 area code.

I put Brooks's card next to the screen.

It matched.

I traced the calls for October with my finger.

Forty-one outgoing to his number.

A dozen of them started between one and four in the morning, while I slept next to her.

Most were listed at zero minutes, which meant they rang through to voicemail.

Four were listed at forty seconds or longer.

I scrolled to the incoming list and went through it twice.

His number was not on it once.

In all three years, not one call had come from him to her.

I sat back on the stool.

A customer had left a rocking chair by the door, and I looked at it for a while without seeing it.

There were reasons.

A blocked number does not show up in a carrier's list.

That was what Lydia would say, and she would be right.

I closed the app and did not call her.

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