She Handed Me a Paper Plate, So I Canceled Her Whole Family novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sponsored

Live on Kelsey's feed, Susannah ends her sponsorship, and Kelsey blurts that Brodie knew about the Singapore deal weeks before anyone was told.

Kelsey went live at ten on Monday morning, in a glass pop-up shop with my company's logo on the wall behind her.

She wore a white knit set and held up a Pathlight Eats holiday box with both hands.

"Hi, loves," she said to the ring light. "Big day. We're opening the Thanksgiving restock, and I have a discount code for every single one of you."

I stood behind the camera between a rack of tote bags and a pyramid of cranberry sauce.

Daniel stood next to me with his hands in his coat pockets.

Kelsey did not see us.

Her phone, propped under the light, showed the chat scrolling in a blur of pink hearts.

Then the hearts stopped.

I watched the comments change from across the room.

Is this the paper plate girl?

NO WAY this is the sister.

Did your mom really do that to her??

Kelsey smiled harder.

"Okay, so I know a clip is going around," she said. "It's a family joke. It got out of context, and honestly, it's been a lot for us."

The comments came faster.

She literally filmed it.

You filmed it and laughed.

Where's the wife??

A man in the shop asked his friend, "Who's the paper plate girl?" and his friend pointed his phone at me.

I stepped forward until I was in the corner of the frame.

Kelsey saw me in her monitor.

The smile stayed on her mouth and left her eyes.

"Susannah! Hi. Everyone, this is my sister-in-law."

"The paper plate girl," I said. "Hello."

"We were just talking about you."

"I heard."

My phone buzzed in my palm.

It was an email from the head of our marketing team, marked URGENT, with the subject line: Termination of Brand Partnership, K. Kittredge.

I read it out loud so the microphone could hear.

"Dear Ms. Kittredge. Effective immediately, Pathlight Eats ends its sponsorship agreement with you."

Kelsey's face went blank.

"Susannah, you can't. I have a contract."

"You have a contract with Pathlight," I said. "I'm Pathlight."

I turned to the room.

The whole room had stopped what they were doing.

"For three years, her biggest sponsor has been the company I started in a rented office in Dayton. She has been paid thirty-eight thousand dollars a month to tell you to use my app."

Kelsey's hand went flat over her phone.

"Stop it."

"On Thursday she filmed her mother handing me a paper plate. She whispered that the light was perfect."

"That was for close friends," Kelsey said. "Four thousand of them."

I looked straight at the camera.

"Now it's thirty thousand, and I'm still here."

In the corner of the screen, the viewer count climbed.

Forty thousand. Fifty. The hearts did not come back.

Kelsey's voice cracked.

"You think you're so much better than us. You think you're something."

"I think I'm the one who paid."

Her chin shook.

Then she got angry, which was what I had been waiting for.

"You don't get to do this! Brodie said you'd fold. Mom said you'd cry, and you'd come home and sign the papers, and you'd say sorry. You always do. You're the most predictable person I know."

Daniel took half a step forward.

I raised a hand, and he stopped.

"What papers, Kelsey?"

She heard what she had said.

Her mouth opened.

"Nothing. I mean, some family paperwork. Mom wanted you to look at something."

"It was nine pages and six flags," I said. "I read it in my car."

Kelsey's eyes flicked to the lens.

"Turn it off," she said to nobody.

Nobody did.

The chat had become a wall of words too fast to read.

Daniel said, quietly, "Get her off the feed, Susannah. She's going to say something she can't take back."

"I want her to."

Kelsey turned on me with her phone shaking in her hand.

"Brodie told us weeks ago!" she said. "He said you were about to close some massive thing in Singapore, and after it was announced you'd be too big for us to push around. He said we had to get your signature before it posted."

The shop went completely silent.

She put her hand over her mouth.

Too late.

I did not say anything for a while.

On the screen, the viewer count passed ninety thousand.

I had told no one about Singapore.

Not my husband, and not my mother in Dayton.

Only Daniel, one lawyer and the people in Singapore had known.

I turned my head and looked at Daniel.

He was looking at the floor.

"I didn't tell him," he said quietly.

"I know you didn't."

I looked at Kelsey.

"Then how did he know?"

Kelsey stared at me with her mouth still half open.

She did not have an answer.

The ring light hummed.

The only place the whole Singapore deal had ever been written down was my work email.

Brodie had known my password for eight years.

Somebody had been reading it for months.

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