Chapter 10: The Doorbell Camera

I went down the drive in his shirt and bare feet, with the gravel cold under my soles and the glass still in my hand.

The sedan's window slid down before I reached it.

Deborah sat behind the wheel in her camel coat with her phone propped on the dashboard.

The screen showed my own porch, lit gold, and a woman in a man's shirt coming down the steps.

"Good evening, Clarissa," she said.

"You're filming me."

"I'm documenting. Someone has to." She held up her phone so I could see a different video already playing.

It was the bay at seven that morning, shot from across the lot.

A man in uniform lifted a nurse off the pavement, and she had her arms around his neck.

The counter underneath read forty thousand views.

"A girl in the day crew posted it before lunch," Deborah said. "Everyone has seen it, dear. Even the people who like you."

"I'm not ashamed of that video."

"No. That's the trouble with you."

She said it kindly.

"You have a gift for making a private disgrace public," she said. "I would like to see how long it lasts at the county hospital."

"The hospital is nothing to do with you."

"The Aldrich Foundation gives that hospital six hundred thousand dollars a year. I sit on its board. Good night, Clarissa."

The window rose, and the sedan backed down the lane without turning on its lights until it reached the road.

I stood there with my feet freezing.

Across the road, a green light blinked on a neighbor's porch.

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