Chapter 5 - The Phone at the Bottom of the Bin
That afternoon, Naomi found the phone. She came into the kitchen holding a black rectangle with a cracked corner.
"Mom? Wasn't this Dad's?"
My heart started pounding. I took it from her. It was Grant's old phone — the one he'd told me he'd lost almost a year before the fishing trip. We'd searched the car, the garage, the couch cushions. Eventually we'd just bought him another.
"Where was this?"
"Bottom of the electronics bin."
I flipped it over. Completely dead. Naomi found a matching charger and plugged it in, then sat beside it like she was waiting for a pulse.
"Mom, what if there are pictures on it?"
I froze for a second. "Probably just old ones."
"What if there are videos? Voice notes?"
I didn't answer. The phone finally powered on, connected automatically to our home Wi-Fi, and a few minutes later old photos started filling the gallery. Naomi opened it.
I couldn't watch. Not yet. So I left her at the table and went upstairs.
A few minutes later I heard her running up after me. "Mom..."
Something in her voice made me turn. Naomi stood in my bedroom doorway holding the phone with both hands, her face gone pale.
"What happened?"
She swallowed. "There's a video that synced from Dad's account."
My heart started racing. "What kind of video?"
"It's from the day before the fishing trip."
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I stepped toward her. She looked down at the screen, then back up at me.
"Mom, I know what really happened back then."
