***
After my shower, I get dressed while Scott jumps in. On my nightstand I grab the tube of my favorite lotion, trying to squeeze the last remaining drops from the empty container.
“Shit,” I mutter, knowing it’ll be months before I can afford another one. But then I remember the small travel-size tube Scott got me for my birthday last year. I’d left it in his glove compartment after a road trip we took to Tahoe.
“I’m getting something from your car,” I call through the closed bathroom door.
“What?” he yells over the sound of running water.
I ignore him and grab his keys from the hall table where they sit next to his cell phone. The cool air outside envelops my wet hair, but instead of feeling the chill, I feel invigorated. A night out might be exactly what I need. I spot his car parked a few doors down and unlock it, sliding onto the passenger seat and opening the glove compartment.
I find my lotion behind the car manual and several old takeout napkins. I grab it and am about to close the glove compartment when I spot a cell phone wedged into a corner.
The lotion slips onto my lap as I take the phone and turn it over in my hands. It’s small and black, one of those throwaway burner phones that look like a smartphone but only perform the most basic of functions—calls, emails, and internet. I click the screen awake, hoping to see a photograph of strangers, their lost cell phone safely tucked in Scott’s glove compartment until he can return it. But it’s just a plain blue background, showing the time, date, and an unlock button.
I tap it and the phone awakes, no password protecting it, as if whoever owns it isn’t worried about stolen data.
There are no photos, no contacts, outgoing or incoming calls. I toggle over to the web browser to look at the browsing history.
My breath hitches in my chest as my eyes scan the list, the familiar names of gambling sites that have haunted my dreams and my darker moments lining up to reveal how well Scott lied.
I scroll down further to the date of the concert in the park. The time of the attempted breach at the bank. It was Scott who’d tried to access my account.
Quickly, I toggle over to the settings to see what email is linked to the phone. And even though I’m expecting it, even though I’m bracing for what I know I’ll find, it still feels like a punch in the chest.
Calistasniece at Yahoo.
Meg
September
Eight Weeks before the Election
All roads lead back to Canyon Drive. Once again, I find myself sitting in my car, staring at my childhood home. How many times have I parked in this exact spot? How many hours have I lost, remembering the way we were tossed out, clothes hastily shoved into garbage bags, no time to even put on my shoes as the sheriff stood in the foyer and neighbors wandered onto their driveways and wide lawns to watch.
But today is different. Today I’m doing the final walk-through with my buying clients, Gretchen and Rick. Clients I poached from a colleague after I overheard him talking about what kind of a house they needed. A few phone calls, a coincidental encounter at an open house, an off-the-record opportunity, not even listed yet. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to snag a property in today’s competitive market?
Canyon Drive will be closing tomorrow, and Ron has moved into a hotel until we can find him something more fitting for a state senator, a necessary pivot away from income properties that were never part of my plan. And now I will be going back inside my home—not for the first time, but for the last.
The first time had been just over a month ago in early August, to show the house to Gretchen and Rick. Ron had been there as well, so I’d had to keep my expression curious and open.
I’d been surprised by how much had changed. The floors were now stained dark instead of the blond wood I remembered. The brick fireplace had been refaced in marble, and the kitchen was completely new. But as I’d stood at the sink staring out the window and into the backyard, the view had been exactly as I’d remembered it. The same lawn sloping down toward the tall hedges in back. The sycamore tree, the shape of its branches exactly the same, all the way down to the pocket where two of the larger limbs met, the width of my hips, the perfect spot to read or hide from my mother and Ron.