Chapter 11: Sixty-Two Messages

My phone buzzed so hard that it walked across the tablecloth and bumped Marcy's glass.

The screen filled with messages from Domenic.

They stacked on top of each other as fast as I could blink, and every one of them was stamped 7:02.

"What is that?" said an aunt.

"It's nothing," Domenic said, jabbing at his own phone. "A glitch. Sorry. Everybody keep eating."

His screen lit again.

I could see it from where I sat, because he was holding it up over the table.

At the top of his screen were the words Queue: 62 messages. Sending.

Under that, in small gray letters, was the name of the account's author.

It said V. Aston.

Marcy picked up my phone.

"Don't," I said.

"Somebody has to read one," she said, and cleared her throat.

"'I watched a man at the bus stop eat soup with a fork this morning. I thought: she would have a theory.'"

"Oh, that's good," said the other aunt.

"Here's another. 'Today is Tuesday. Nobody has ever been sad on a Tuesday while holding a good pen.'"

Somebody at the table laughed.

"'The roof is empty if you want the quiet,'" Marcy read, more slowly. "'I'll bring nothing and sit very far away.'"

The room had stopped laughing.

I knew that one.

I had a printout of it in a shoebox.

In three years I had never once read it to the end without my throat closing.

"Domenic," Sal said.

His voice was thin, and nobody at that table would have dared to talk over it.

"Dad, it's an app," Domenic said. "It's a scheduling app. Vic and I share it."

"You share it."

"We both use it. Victor loads the messages, because he's good with words. And I send them. We work together."

"Who writes them?" I said.

My voice came out calm, which surprised me.

Domenic looked at me.

For one second I watched him choose between three excuses, and I recognized the format.

"Victor writes them," Domenic said. "Sundays. He sits down with a coffee and does a week's worth."

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