insides surges toward the sky and I grab it, a small black coil, and rip at its ends to untangle the knots.
I sit down on my bed, locking the door behind me, and begin to cry again: Without my computer, I don’t know where to plug this in. But the resolute part of me fights back, waving its little arms and stomping its little feet until I look again and see that the cord’s end is unusual but not totally weird; I sift through more jumbled cords until I find a plug that fits, an old digital camera charger from the same era. I push it into the wall and an outdated graphic appears on the camcorder’s screen: FLIP VIDEO.
I sit hunched on my bed for the full twenty-four minutes. I can’t make out the words, but the affect seeps through—strained and quavering at times, then the staccato of sobbing. I play it a second time with my phone held up to its speaker, recording. I find the email Damien forwarded me from the online sound-cleanup app he used to snap my warble into focus: Have you guys seen Alex? I tap through to the program and upload the file. My finger lingers over the Filter! button, with an exclamation point like it’s only meant for perky things, and then I press it.
It’s ready in less than a minute and I listen again, comprehending this time, pausing when my own sobs get so loud that I can’t hear Tessa’s voice. It cuts off at the beginning of her 911 call, which sounds eerily like Sarah’s—screeches, shock.
More hunches come to me like things I read in a book or maybe fact-checked in an article long ago—that Tessa sought me out, befriended me after changing her name and look. The button nose, the one I’ve always admired, now seems obviously fake. Greg helped me, he pointed me in the right direction, I think. And the White Lotus Thai…everything was off about it, even the delivery, though I can’t remember how. But I’m certain Tessa was behind that, too.
I hear the deadbolt clink and look up at my locked bedroom door; behind it, I know, Tessa is navigating her way in. When I crack it open, she’s dropping her keys and balancing a bag of groceries on her hip. For a moment, I see it: the Flip cam a flimsy weapon, beat into her temple over and over and over again until the skin bruises and splits open like a ripe stone fruit. Swelling pushing up through those wide eyes and that perfect nose, the one she didn’t deserve, the one she got to trick me. Blood trickling out like juice as she fights back, waving both arms wildly, the groceries spreading out on the floor, eggs cracked on the hardwood.
I step out into the hallway.
“I thought I could make French toast,” she says, smiling, then busies herself with the groceries. “Do you want to make us some coffee?”
I follow her into the kitchen, pressing the front door closed as I pass.
“What’s up, you okay?” She’s already whipped out a cutting board.
I clear my throat. “Sorry, I’m fine. I forgot to take my sleeping pills last night, so I’m kind of out of it.”
“I gave them to you, right? Where’d you leave them?” She’s taken off her sling, and with a fat chef’s knife, she begins calmly destroying a pineapple, dismantling its spiny skin.
“Just in the bathroom. I’ll take them tonight.” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Sounds like we both need coffee then.”
I stare at her, then shake my head. “Sorry. Right.” I pull the beans and grinder out of the cabinet. What do I do?
She fries up our French toast and I suggest we eat in the living room, far from all my sharp objects. She agrees, still cheerfully soliloquizing about her in-laws’ concerns over how barky little Marlon will treat the baby.
“I thought it would be a whole power-struggle, territorial thing,” she says, taking a sip of coffee, “but Will’s dad was insisting dogs just get jealous and insecure. We finally looked it up at the table, and wouldn’t you know it, he was right.”
“Tessa,” I break in.
“What?”
“I found the keystroke logger.” How much would she admit to?
“Huh?”
“On my laptop. Like you used on Will. And I know I didn’t put it there, so.”
She pops a chunk of pineapple in her mouth and chews thoughtfully. “What are you saying?”
I take a deep breath. “Is it yours?”
A beat, a long one, and