Why are you doing this?
We all make choices. Like you did, that night on the trail.
Carver?
I told you I’m Sam.
Hannah?
You’re being tedious.
Did you hurt my husband?
I’m fine, Cassie. Great, actually. I’ve found someone who doesn’t work all the time.
The words brought back an argument about my long hours at the clinic. More than a month before.
A woman who’s not holding on to that extra fifteen pounds six years after childbirth.
I had voiced this insecurity a week earlier when Sam and I had been alone in our bedroom—though apparently not alone at all.
I’m not sure if this new relationship will work out, so I hope you can leave us alone. I know how you can be when you’re jealous.
With these words, I could suddenly see Brooklyn, or the young woman in the photo, brutalized and left in some public space for the police to discover. With evidence on her that would lead back to me. Rico already had reason to be suspicious of me.
But I was more afraid for Sam. My hands trembled as I typed: If you hurt Sam, I’ll end you.
The taunt came quickly, and I sensed the sick joy in it: And how exactly will you do that? I mean, if I weren’t Sam. Which I am.
I haven’t decided yet. But I went to medical school. I’ll come up with something creative.
I think I should go to the police.
If he did, this conversation would cast as much doubt on me as it did him.
Then he typed: Especially after what happened with Lester. I heard you actually poisoned him. Poor dog.
A familiar anger flooded me, but this time, I didn’t fight it. On my virtual keypad, I stabbed out a threat: I’ve decided whatever I do to you will involve scalpels. Retractors and clamps too.
I know you’re hurting, but at least you have the kids. I pulled Audrey closer still, so she sat more in my chair than hers. I hope to see them soon.
Is that a threat?
I could see that “Sam” was typing, and each of the seconds spent waiting raked at my nerves. Finally, the text popped on the screen: Why would I threaten my own children?
23
As a teenager, I plowed my car into the neighbor’s living room. On purpose. It wasn’t without cause—I’d caught the creep staring in my bedroom window on several occasions—but I concede there were more practical steps I should have taken.
Another time, I throat-punched a bully who had stolen a smaller kid’s backpack. Again, that probably shouldn’t have been my first course of action. Especially since it was less about protecting that smaller kid than the fact that I hadn’t punched anyone in months.
So I was angry, a lot and often with little provocation. But as an adult, I had realized most problems were better solved with diplomacy and intellect and empathy.
This was not one of those problems.
Thus far, I had done everything right: on the trail that night, it was clumsiness, not recklessness, that had sent me careening down that hill. I had called 911. Later, I had cooperated with the police and updated them at every step. I had even been civil to the woman who claimed to be screwing my husband. True, over the past couple of days, there had been moments I’d gotten angry. But I’d fought it.
I didn’t fight it now. With the texts threatening my children and Leo in the next room getting another MRI, for his knee this time, I was well and truly pissed.
I spotted Zoe walking down the corridor and waved her over. She handed me my laptop bag. “How’s Leo?”
“Mild concussion, and they’re worried about his knee. Perla’s on her way?”
“Right behind me.” She returned my house key. “She found something at the house, but I’ll let her show you.”
When Perla Anderson arrived five minutes later, Zoe took Audrey to another set of chairs halfway down the corridor.
Years before, I had treated Perla’s Rottweiler for hip dysplasia. It had been a while since I had seen her, but she was nevertheless who I’d thought of after the latest string of texts.
Perla wore her usual uniform: jeans, a messenger bag, and a novelty T-shirt, this one proclaiming: I’m not lazy. Just buffering. Last time she had been in my clinic, she had been finishing her master’s in computer science. Like then, she smelled of clove cigarettes and the coffee she sipped from her travel mug.
She put down her bag and motioned to the one Zoe had just given me. “Is that it?” she asked.
I pulled out the laptop, logged in, and handed it to her. I did the same with my phone.
She balanced her coffee between her legs as she tapped at the keyboard, her nails jagged nubs.
“Zoe said you found something at our house?”
She paused in her typing to reach into her pocket, then opened her palm. There rested three circles, all white and about the size of a penny.
“You were right to think someone has been eavesdropping on you. I found these on your ceiling in the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom.”
Perla took a sip of coffee, then reached into her other pocket. This time, she hesitated. “I found this too.” She pressed a small, hard object in my hand. It was a USB wall charger, also white, the kind everyone in our family used to charge our cell phones.
I wrinkled my nose as I studied it, not understanding at first. I opened my mouth to ask why she had given it to me, but then I noticed it: a small hole that shouldn’t have been there.
“A camera?” When she nodded, I shivered. “Where’d you find it?”
“Your bedroom.”
In my head played all the camera could have witnessed. Sure, there was the sex, infrequent as it had become, but there were other moments when Sam and I had shared tenderness or insecurities that seemed even greater violations. All the moments we thought we were alone but someone else listened, and watched.
My stomach roiled. I might never go home again.
“You’re sure that’s all of them?”
“I swept for other devices, but that’s it, at least as far as bugs.” I didn’t like the way she said that last part, or the way she scowled at the screen of my laptop.
“Is there a way to tell who’s texting with Sam’s phone?”
She shrugged. “It may not even be Sam’s phone. With caller ID spoofing, it would be easy enough for the texts to appear to come from anywhere.”
“Can they be traced?”
“It’s possible, but it’s not easy. Plus, you have other issues.”
Perla tapped the screen, clicking through a series of social media posts, leaving me only a few seconds to read each.
JL’s team sucks almost as hard as his girl.
JL’s so fat and stupid the only letters of the alphabet he knows are KFC.
JL’s bitch opens her legs for everyone except him.
One post had a photo of a drooling bulldog and a girl’s name. I assumed the name belonged to “JL’s” girlfriend.
Another showed a badly edited photo of a guy in a football jersey doing obscene things to a pig, with the caption: The closest JL gets to the pigskin.
“What’s this?”
“I pulled those from Leo’s social media.”
Teenagers have lives and secrets and bad choices they hide from their parents. Of course they do. Still, it was with unshakable confidence that I said, “Leo wouldn’t do this.”