Chapter 14: Group Chat

I was halfway across the lawn to find Bree when every phone in the house buzzed at once.

Eleven phones, in the kitchen and the hall and the sunroom, made the same short chirp.

Anders's was the first one I reached.

It was the Carrow family group chat, which had thirty-eight members, two of whom were cousins who only wrote in capital letters.

Bree had been added by Tobin, years ago, and nobody had ever removed her.

She had posted a photograph of a yellow sticky note.

It said, in my red pen: Day 812, A. wore the blue sweater with lint on the left shoulder and I did not remove it, 96.

Under it she had typed: Meet the bride, seven years of this, is she a fan or is she obsessed?

A second photo arrived, and a third.

By the time we reached the dining room there were sixty-one of them, and the reactions were arriving in a stream.

Flames and gasping faces scrolled past, and a cousin I had never met wrote: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

My mother had found the chat on her own phone, which she held at arm's length, and she was typing with one finger.

"Mom, don't."

"I'm correcting the record."

She turned the screen to show me.

THAT IS MY DAUGHTER AND SHE HAS GOOD HANDWRITING, it said, and under that, in a row, nine thumbs-up.

"Mom."

"What? It's true. The sevens are lovely."

Anders sat down at the table with his phone and began to read the notes, one after another, with his thumb.

I watched his face.

He read Day 812 and went red, which I had expected.

Then he read one from the second year, and stopped.

Day 1,061, it said: A. left the porch light on when I came back late from the library and pretended he forgot, 100.

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