She opened up the admin panel to the page with the link to disable the site. “You can.”
“Holy shit.” I waited for her final nod of approval, then raised my finger and slowly lowered it like a bomb in slow motion, complete with the whistling sound. As I clicked it, she said, “Boom!”
I copied my blog post onto an index.html file, added my contact email, and uploaded it to my public_html directory. That would force anyone coming to the main page to see my message. Then I redirected all traffic to the front page. To be extra thorough, I changed permissions to make the rest of the pages inaccessible and I renamed the database.
“Well. That’s that.”
I blew out a lungful of air. I thought I might cry after we were done, but Zion handed me a beer, and tilted his bottle toward me.
As we clinked, he said, “Vive la révolution.”
I suddenly did feel like celebrating, relieved and proud of myself for walking away on my terms. It really had been a long time coming.
Ash got word that her sister-in-law was back in the hospital, so she rushed off first thing in the morning to meet her brother there. Zion insisted on cooking me some breakfast before I left for work.
“I miss Jo sometimes. We had a rhythm. And Andrew doesn’t eat breakfast, so . . . Can I make you some eggs?”
He set a plate on each of our placemats, then started interrogating me. “Do you want someone to tell Shane what you did?”
“Not really. No.” The eggs were perfect. I tried the toast and bacon. I could get used to being treated like this. It would be like being home with Mom again.
“Have you talked to Adam or Eden?”
That was a good question. “No. Do you think this will make them want to have nothing to do with me now?”
He shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Eden’s a tough read, but I’ve only known her to bristle over invasions into her privacy. Not sure how she’ll react to a complete embargo on free publicity for her husband. Adam probably won’t even notice.”
“Did you talk to Jo?”
“I’ll let you do that.” He studied me a minute and added, “Can I give you some advice?”
“Of course.”
“Not everyone is who they appear to be.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, but I chewed on my bacon and mulled it over. I figured he meant Shane. “I’ve already begun to figure that out.”
“Sometimes people hide in plain sight. Sometimes they wear disguises to protect themselves. You have to give people time to reveal themselves.”
I sat on that a minute, wondering if he was warning me that the Shane I’d first met had been hiding someone much more sinister. If that were the case, then why did they all seem to want things to work out? Was he saying I should give Shane more time to show me who he really was?
Or was he talking about me? Had he somehow understood the double identity I’d only just shed?
“Thanks, Zion. I’ll think about that.”
On my way in to work, it occurred to me that I’d simply fall into obscurity for most of the fan site people. I had no plans to join whatever group they set up elsewhere, and the only way they had to reach me would be through the admin contact email, which would continue to work until I let the domain name lapse. I’d been afraid to check it, but I logged in on my phone before going up to the office. My inbox was filled with multiple emails with the subject To Layla just like the private messages. I nearly opened one up, in case they were simply kind farewells, but I didn’t know if I could resist a sustained effort to get me to bring the site back up. I’d read them later. In a week or a month. Once they’d had a chance to move on.
As soon as I got to my cube, Gabe appeared. “That was a bold, Napoleonic move. What made you go and pull the plug like that?”
Why wasn’t I surprised he’d noticed?
“Just time to move on.”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish is what I always say.” He leaned his elbow on my cube wall. I used to think it looked elegant, but now it was bordering on creepy. “I’m curious, though. You trying to win back little drummer boy?”
Shane was anything but little. I pulled out my chair and dropped into it, intending to