The Hacker Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Live From the Doorstep

Marlena arrives at Maybelle's bungalow to forgive Waverly on a livestream; Waverly and Maybelle turn it on her, and a bank notice for $48,200 lands the same afternoon.

Maybelle Calhoun was standing at the stove in her scrubs and bare feet, frying onions, when the doorbell rang at four o'clock.

She had come off a twelve-hour night shift and slept for five hours, and she still smelled like hospital soap and Dove.

I loved her so much I had to look at the ceiling.

"If that's the church lady again," she said, "tell her I gave at the office."

I opened the door.

Marlena stood on the little concrete porch in a cream coat and pearl studs, holding her phone up on a stick.

A red light was already blinking on the top of it.

"Hi, everyone," she said brightly, to the phone and not to me.

"I'm in East Point, and I wanted you all to see what forgiveness looks like."

My stomach went cold and clear.

I had seen this livestream once before, from a boarding-house bed, with the volume down.

She had a box of bakery cookies in her other hand, tied with ribbon.

"Waverly," she said, and her voice shook just enough.

"I'm not angry about the code. I only want my sister back."

The little number in the corner of her screen said 4,100 people were watching.

Behind me Maybelle's spatula stopped sizzling.

"Is that a camera?" she said.

"It's a live stream, Mama," I said.

"Lord."

Marlena glanced past me into the narrow front hall.

The photographs hung there in cheap frames, school pictures and graduation caps and one terrible Christmas sweater.

She looked at the photographs a half-second too long.

Then she turned the phone to the street, so the viewers could see the cracked sidewalk and the peeling paint.

I stepped out onto the porch and shut the door behind me.

"You came a long way to forgive me," I said. "Thank you."

"Say it once more for the camera. Tell them who wrote Lamplight."

"Hear what?"

"That you wrote Lamplight."

She smiled for the lens.

"I did, sweetheart."

"Great," I said. "Then you won't mind this."

I put my laptop on the porch rail, opened a blank file, and turned the screen so the little phone could see it.

"It's an empty page," I said.

"The first thing in Lamplight locks a chart so only the charge nurse can open it."

I tapped the keys.

"Whoever wrote it knows how it starts."

Marlena's smile stayed in place.

"Type the first line," I said. "Four thousand people will watch you do it."

The number in her corner jumped to six thousand.

She took one step toward the keyboard and stopped.

"I'm not going to perform for you."

"It's a function," I said. "Six lines. I wrote it at nineteen at that kitchen table with a nosebleed."

The comments moved so fast on her screen that I could see them from where I stood.

she should just type it

why won't she type it lol

Marlena's thumb found the corner of the phone.

She was going to end it.

The front door opened behind me.

"Baby," Maybelle said, drying her hands on a dish towel, "do you want some sweet tea? It's ninety degrees out here."

She was talking to Marlena.

She had never met Marlena, and she was offering her sweet tea.

Marlena turned and the phone swung with her.

For one moment the stream caught the whole of Maybelle, the silver-brown curls and the soft arms and the beaded glasses chain.

She jerked away from the towel.

"Don't touch me," she said.

It came out low and ugly and perfectly clear on the microphone.

"You smell like a hospital. I don't want anything from your house."

Maybelle's hand stayed in the air.

"Well," she said, with great dignity. "All right."

The comments froze for a second.

Then they poured down the screen.

Marlena hit the red button so hard that the phone stick wobbled.

"That was edited," she said, to nobody.

"It was live," I said. "Four thousand people were on it. You can ask them."

She stared at me.

Her lipstick was perfect, and her hands were shaking.

Then she turned on her heel and walked down the steps.

A black town car idled at the curb beyond the gate.

Maybelle watched it go with the dish towel still in her hand.

"That girl," she said slowly, "has some of the worst manners I have ever seen on a person with a nice coat."

"Mama."

"I'm just saying."

I laughed, and then my eyes stung so hard I had to stop.

A white sedan pulled up behind the town car as it left.

A man in a bank blazer got out and walked up the path with a manila envelope.

He held it out to Maybelle with a very careful face.

"Ms. Calhoun? I'm sorry about the timing. The loan on this house has been called in."

Maybelle took the envelope.

She read the first page, and her face did not change.

"Forty-eight thousand, two hundred dollars," she read, "due in full by Friday."

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