They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Live at Dawn
Natalie and Hattie find Amber streaming from the porch in her robe, Natalie reads the deed to three hundred thousand viewers, and Dalton lets go of her wrist when he sees Rhys filming from across the street.
At seven in the morning Amber was on my front porch in my bathrobe, drinking coffee from my mug and streaming to three hundred thousand people.
A phone sat on a tripod beside her, its red light blinking.
Hattie killed the engine at the curb and said, "Tell me you're not walking up there."
"I'm walking up there."
"Then I'm walking up there with you."
I climbed my own steps in Rhys's navy jacket, and Amber saw me over the rim of the mug.
She turned to the camera and lit up.
"Good morning, my loves! Look who came back for her security deposit."
A guard stood by the porch rail with his arms crossed.
It was the one who had twisted my arm.
"Amber," I said, "whose name is on the deed to this house?"
She laughed into the lens.
"Dalton's. Obviously. Natalie's been living here on his generosity for a year, and she thinks it's hers."
I took out my phone and opened the county property record I had pulled up in Hattie's car at three in the morning.
I held the screen up to the camera.
"Owner: Natalie Brennan," I read. "Purchased fourteen months ago. One name."
Amber's smile stayed where it was.
Her eyes went to the tripod.
Hattie leaned over my shoulder and read from her own phone. "Chat just said, wait, she bought it herself?"
"Read the next one," I said.
"'Amber, did you tell Dalton's friends it was his house?'" Hattie read. "'Amber, did she say she was calling the cops last night?'"
Amber put the mug down.
"It's a bit, you guys," she told the camera. "It's content. Natalie knows it's a bit."
"Then say hello to the man who twisted my arm for the bit," I said, and pointed at the guard.
He uncrossed his arms and looked at the street.
"Whose invoice is he on, Amber?"
She didn't answer.
"The security company bills Dalton," I told the lens, "and last night it ended at forty-one thousand five hundred dollars in transfers, every one of them on a wall screen you built."
The chat scrolled so fast Hattie stopped reading it.
"'Unfollowing,'" she said, and then, "'Unfollowing.' 'My sister was evicted once. This is not funny.' Oh, here's a good one. 'Where's the friend she sent to a locked door?'"
"That's me," Hattie told the camera. "I was in Fitchburg at a locked door, and the person who sent me is standing right there."
Amber tried one more angle.
"She signed a lease with Dalton," she said. "I've seen it."
"Name the month," I said.
"March."
"I closed on this house with my own savings," I said. "Nobody has ever asked me for rent."
The chat stopped scrolling for a moment, and then it started again, faster.
Hattie read it out without looking up. "Somebody wrote, 'She just lied live.' Somebody else wrote, 'Is that a person's actual front door?'"
Amber reached for the tripod.
"I'm going to wrap this up," she said brightly. "Love you all, we'll take this offline."
I put my hand flat against the phone and held it where it was.
"No," I said. "Leave it on."
Behind me the front door banged open.
Dalton stood in the doorway in yesterday's shirt, his hair flat on one side, his face drawn tight.
He crossed the porch in three strides.
"Turn it off," he said to Amber.
"She won't let me," Amber said, almost cheerfully.
He turned to me, and his voice dropped to the one he used at his office.
"Nat. Come inside and we'll talk about this like adults."
"You told your friends it was your house," I said, loud enough for the microphone.
"We can discuss that inside."
"Say it to them, Dalton. Tell three hundred thousand people whose house this is."
His hand closed around my wrist.
It was the same wrist he had held on the lawn, and the bruise from the night before rang under his fingers.
"You are embarrassing both of us," he said through his teeth.
"No," I said. "You did that."
I pulled, and he held on.
Hattie said, "Hey," in a voice I had never heard from her.
Then Dalton's eyes moved over my shoulder and past it, and his grip loosened.
I looked back.
Across the street, Rhys stood on his front steps in a gray T-shirt with his phone raised and aimed at us.
He didn't wave and he didn't shout.
He just kept filming.
Dalton let go of my wrist so fast it was almost a flinch.
The color left his face.
Amber saw it too, and for the first time that morning she stopped performing.
"Dalton?" she said.
He wasn't looking at her.
He leaned close to me, and his voice cracked on the first word.
"What did he tell you?"
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