Chapter 19: The Truth

I scrolled down.

The comments went on and on.

"Thief."

"Imagine robbing a guy and then building a tech company with it."

"Somebody email her investors."

Somebody had.

Garner's inbox had eighty new messages by noon.

Most of them said the same thing in different words.

"Your startup employs a thief," he read. "Well. That's short."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"For what? You didn't write them."

He looked up at me over his reading glasses.

"Is any of it true, Lindsay?"

"No."

"Then I'm not worried about it."

He deleted them in a batch and went back to his coffee.

The woman who ran the clinic network was less calm.

She'd been talking to us about a pilot in three of her rural clinics.

That afternoon she emailed to say she'd like to "pause our conversation until things settle."

Garner read that one out loud.

Then he didn't say anything for a while.

Everybody went home at six.

I stayed.

At seven, the side door of the garage opened.

Nolan came back in.

He had his phone in his hand, open on Ryan's post.

"This is the guy from the steps," he said.

"Yes."

"The one who wrote to your fellowship."

"Yes."

"The one the police in Dayton charged with fraud last month."

I looked up.

"How do you know that?"

"I looked him up. After the first video." He put the phone face down on the workbench. "I look everything up. You know that."

He pulled over a folding chair and sat across from me, next to the lawn mower.

"Is this what you won't tell me?" he said. "Is it about him? The money?"

"No."

"Then what is it?"

I looked at him.

He'd come back.

"If I tell you," I said, "you'll think I'm crazy."

"I already think you're a little crazy. Try me."

So I told him.

Everything, from the cursor on Decline to the empty call log.

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