Chapter 21: The Screen

The words were three feet high and white on blue, and the room read them together.

Is she still seeing the boss?

Yes. She's quiet. I'll keep her agreeable.

Good boy. Tell me when she books a flight home.

I turned my head.

At the back of the ballroom, Miles stood by the AV booth with his phone held in both hands and his thumb on the screen.

He did not look at me.

He kept scrolling.

The thread rolled up the wall, message after message, going back three years.

Where is she tonight? Gordon had asked, on a Friday.

At the library. I walked her home. She thinks I'm sweet, Trevor had answered.

Keep her sweet.

Then a new image slid onto the screen, a ledger with a heading from Unsworth Women's Associates.

It listed a payment to a law school, fourteen thousand five hundred dollars.

The memo line read: Varley, T. Deposit. Per G.H.

Silence went through the tables, and then a rustle.

At a round table near the back, a plain woman in a blue dress was sitting with her hand flat on the cloth.

She was reading every line.

She had Trevor's brown eyes.

"Turn it off," Trevor said.

He had come to his feet at table four, in his navy quarter-zip under a tuxedo jacket, and his face was blotched red.

"This is private. Somebody turn it off."

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