Chapter 7: Viral

Levi stepped in front of me before Garner finished the sentence.

"Back up," he said. "Hands where I can see them."

Garner lifted both hands and showed his empty palms.

He did not look afraid.

"Deputy," he said pleasantly. "I'm a citizen in a public lot. I've come to see my daughter."

"She's not your daughter."

"Is that what she told you?"

I stood behind Levi's shoulder with my fingers gripping the edge of the door.

The voice was the same.

It was slow and a little hoarse, the voice that had said: back the van up, Hallie, hold the gate.

"I only came to give her this," Garner said.

He took a white envelope from his jacket and held it out.

Levi did not take it.

Garner shrugged and laid it on the hood of Levi's truck, and he stepped back to his van.

"Marlene's calling the television people this morning," he said. "She wanted you to see it first, so you'd know it was nothing personal."

He got into the van.

He started it, and he drove off at exactly the speed limit.

Levi wrote down the new plate.

Then he opened the envelope with the tip of a pen.

It held a single photograph, printed on glossy paper.

A hot parking lot, a pink dress, and two small girls hand in hand beside an ice machine.

Mine had braids.

It was taken from across the lot, and I had never known anyone was photographing us.

Written on the back in neat blue ink were the words: Hallie, age 6, and her friend.

Levi said, "She kept it."

"She kept it for this," I said.

By noon I knew what for.

I was sitting in the truck with my phone in my lap, and every screen was the same.

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