Chapter 6
Daniel didn't lift the phone to show me. He turned it around flat on his palm, the way you show a card you don't want snatched.
The kitchen still smelled like onions and vinegar from the salad that was now ground into the rug. I could hear the grill hissing outside, and someone turning kids away from the glass doors. Daniel's thumb hovered over the screen. He hadn't wiped his hand after catching the bowl. There was still a shine on his skin.
"Before he got here," he said. "Look at the time."
I leaned in. The brightness made me squint. It was a text thread. No contact name, just a number. The top message had a photo. It took me a second to recognize my own car, my old gray Civic, parked at an angle in front of the diner on Route 17. The neon sign was on. The timestamp under the photo said 11:14 AM. Today.
Under it, a line of text: Ask her where she was last night
I felt my stomach drop, not because the photo was incriminating, but because I knew exactly when that photo was taken. I'd stopped at the diner for ten minutes that morning to pick up the extra pickles Daniel asked for. I was in and out. I hadn't seen anyone I knew.
"He sent this at eleven fourteen," Daniel said. His voice was low, still controlled. "While you were in the kitchen making the salad. While I was checking the cooler on the patio."
My hand went cold. The nude strap of my heel dug into my ankle where I'd been standing too long.
"That Ethan?" I asked, even though I already knew. I'd seen him once at the company picnic last summer. White shirt, same khaki pants even then, laughing too loud by the cooler while Daniel introduced me to his crew.
Daniel nodded once. "Ethan Miller. Foundation crew. He poured with us in March."
I remembered now what Daniel had told me two weeks before, in bed, after a long day. Foundation foreman had opened up. Daniel got it. Ethan had been there a year longer, thought it was his. Daniel hadn't bragged. He'd just said Ethan stopped talking to him after the announcement, stopped riding in the same truck to the site.
"You're foreman now," I said.
"I am," Daniel said.
Daniel scrolled up with his thumb. There were more messages, but they weren't from today. The one before was from last Thursday. Ethan: u get the Henderson schedule or what Daniel: yeah office sent it No reply after that. Then nothing until today, that photo and that line.
He'd been sitting on it. Waiting for a crowd.
"He was at the diner this morning," I said. "He followed me?"
"Or he was already there," Daniel said. "He knows you drive that way for the store. Doesn't matter. He took that picture to set up what he was going to say here."
I stared at the photo again. The angle was from across the parking lot, low, like he'd taken it from inside his own car. My license plate was clear. Anyone could have made me out.
"You should delete it," I said before I thought. "After today, just delete it. Block him. Don't bring it to work. It'll blow up if you show your boss."
Daniel's jaw tightened. He didn't look at me, he looked at the phone.
"If I delete it, it's my word," he said. "And his word. Again."
"But nobody wants that fight at work," I whispered. I could see my mother-in-law in the reflection of the sliding glass, pretended not to watch. "You got the foreman job. If you make it a thing, they both look bad. You look—"
"Like I can't handle my crew?" He finally looked up. His eyes weren't angry at me. They were tired. "He touched you in our kitchen in front of my family and my kids were outside. He said you were with him. If I let that go, what does tomorrow look like at the site?"
My hands were still clasped together. I realized I'd been holding them that way since the bowl broke.
He slipped the phone into his right pocket, but not before he turned the screen off. The image was gone but I could still see the grain of that photo, the neon blur.
"I asked you where you were last night because I wanted you to answer before I showed him this," he said, quieter, so only I could hear over the grill. "I needed you to say it plain."
I understood then what the second video on that phone had been for, and why he hadn't swung. This thread was the start of the trap. Ethan hadn't come to the barbecue because he wanted me. He came because Daniel had gotten the thing Ethan thought he deserved, and the only way to take it back was to make Daniel look like he couldn't keep control of anything, not concrete, not his house, not his wife.
May you like
Daniel left the thread where it was. He didn't delete it. He tapped his pocket once to check the shape of it, and then he looked past me toward Ethan, who was still by the island with that shocked, pale look, as if he hadn't expected anyone to have kept the receipt.
Outside, the kids laughed too loud on purpose, and the smoke kept rising.
