Stepping-Stone for Mia novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Three Hundred

"Okay," Tim said. "Read me the next one."

It was after midnight, and we'd been at his kitchen table since seven.

Tim lived in a narrow brick rowhouse in Highlandtown, two blocks from his mother.

The kitchen had yellow cabinets and a fridge covered in softball schedules.

The radiator clanked.

My laptop sat between us next to a pot of coffee and a legal pad.

On the screen was Kelly's channel. Kelly Has a Baby.

Her last video before the live was a quick clip. Kelly in a car seat, laughing, one hand on her belly.

"Okay, Baby Beal, we're doing this! Going live from the hospital later, don't go to sleep on me!"

Under it were four thousand comments.

We'd read nine hundred of them.

"I was on the live and I can't stop crying," I read. "Then twelve crying emojis."

"Watching live?"

"She says she was. She left after the baby came."

Tim wrote it on the legal pad. The list had eighty-one usernames, a column for live, and a column for left when.

Nobody had stayed past one fifteen.

We'd sent messages to all of them from Tim's account. Mine got deleted the minute anyone saw the name Harwood.

Hi, I'm a doctor at Harbor Point, trying to find out exactly what happened to Kelly.

Did you record any part of her live?

Most didn't answer.

Some answered with things I won't repeat.

One woman wrote back, Are you the one who killed her?

When Tim said no, she wrote, Then who did?

When he didn't answer that either, she blocked us.

"Next," Tim said.

"You should sleep. You're on at six."

"I'm on at six every day. Next."

The back door banged open.

"Timothy, why is your light on at this hour? I could see it from the alley!"

His mother came in with a casserole dish in oven mitts and a tin of soda bread under one arm.

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