Chapter 3 - 2:43 in the Afternoon
Friday morning, once Greg left for the site and Tyler slouched off to the bus, I locked the bedroom door out of pure instinct. I sat cross-legged on the bed and opened the app.
I scrolled back through hours of nothing. Empty tile. That same moth, or its cousin. Me, half asleep, brushing my teeth.
Then, at 2:43 the afternoon before, the bathroom door swung open.
Colleen walked in.
She had that big straw tote she'd bought at a craft fair last fall. I'd given her a spare key the Christmas before — for emergencies. She had not stopped by that day. She hadn't called. Nothing.
"No," I said to the phone.
She walked straight to the hamper like she paid the mortgage on the place. She reached into the tote, pulled out the purple satin, and dropped it in — smoothing it down, calm and neat, like she was folding a napkin at a nice restaurant.
Then she turned to the mirror. Fixed her hair. Smiled at herself.
She actually smiled.
And walked out.
I couldn't breathe and nearly turned gray. I almost lost my mind right there on the bed.
She'd been in my house. Over and over. Letting herself in with that key while I was at work.
I went cold from my scalp to my feet.
Every conversation from the last two months hit me at once. Colleen sighing over lasagna about how "every man has a hidden side." Colleen sliding lawyer names across my table. Colleen saying, all breezy, "Wouldn't it be fun to get a little place together, Di? Like when we were kids."
She hadn't been warning me.
She'd been steering me.
"How dare you," I whispered to the empty room.
I thought about twenty years. Greg getting up at 4:30 to start my coffee before a shift. The night Tyler was born and Greg fell asleep sitting straight up in the hospital chair, still holding my hand. And my big sister — whose approval I'd been chasing since I was eight years old — had nearly talked me into setting all of it on fire.
Why, though?
I sat there a long minute, looking at the frozen frame of her fluffing her hair in my mirror.
Then something in me just clicked shut.
I picked up my phone and pulled up her name.
I could call Greg first. I could call the police. I could call a locksmith and change every lock in the house without a single word to her.
May you like
No. I wanted her at my table. I wanted her to look me in the eye and lie to me one more time, so I could set the truth down in front of her like a plate of cookies.
I tapped her name. It rang.
