Chapter 3: What the Phone Knew
My dad took one step toward her.
"Who was that?"
"Nobody." Tara pressed the phone against her thigh.
"A friend."
"Show me."
"Excuse me?" Her chin came up.
"You don't get to demand I show you my private messages, David."
"You just accused our daughter of theft in her own home." His voice was still quiet, but something underneath it had changed.
"You tore her room apart.
You told me to throw her out.
So yes, Tara.
I do get to ask."
She laughed — a short, sharp sound that didn't reach her eyes.
"This is unbelievable.
I'm the victim here and somehow I'm being interrogated."
I was standing in the hallway, my back against the wall, trying to make myself small.
My dresser drawers were still hanging open behind my dad.
My notebooks were on the floor where she'd thrown them.
"I'm not interrogating you," my dad said.
"I'm asking you a question."
"And I'm telling you it's none of your business."
The phone buzzed again.
This time, my dad moved faster than I'd ever seen him move.
Not grabbing — just stepping close enough that the screen caught the light from the window before Tara could turn away.
One word.
That's all I saw.
*Marcus.*
My dad went very still.
I knew that name.
We both did.
Marcus Hale had been Tara's ex-boyfriend before she and my dad got together.
She'd told my dad it was completely over.
That they hadn't spoken in years.
That Marcus was in the past and that's where he'd stay.
"Tara." My dad's voice had dropped to almost nothing.
"It's not what you think."
"You haven't even heard what I think yet."
She moved toward the door.
"I'm not doing this right now.
I need some air."
"You're not walking out of this room," my dad said.
She stopped.
Turned.
And for just a moment, I saw something cross her face that I hadn't seen before.
Not the cold calculation from earlier.
Something closer to fear.
"David, I can explain—"
"Then explain." He sat down on the edge of my bed — my bed, in my ransacked room — and looked up at her.
"I've got nowhere to be."
She didn't sit.
She stood in the center of the room with the phone still pressed against her leg and looked at my dad like she was calculating the distance to the door.
"Marcus and I have been talking," she said finally.
"Just talking.
It started a few months ago.
He reached out.
I didn't think it was a big deal."
"A few months."
"It's not romantic.
He's going through something and I was just—"
"A few months, Tara."
She pressed her lips together.
"Yes."
My dad looked at the floor.
Then at me.
Then back at her.
"What else?" he said.
"What do you mean, what else?"
"I mean this started somewhere.
The cash.
The accusations.
The way you've been picking at her for the last six months." He gestured at my open drawers, my scattered notebooks, my upended backpack.
"What else is there that I don't know about?"
The silence stretched long enough that it became its own kind of answer.
Tara's jaw tightened.
"You're making this into something it isn't."
"Am I?"
She looked at me then — really looked at me — and I saw it again.
That cold shift behind her eyes.
Like she was deciding something.
"Ask her," Tara said quietly.
"Ask your precious daughter what she found in my bathroom cabinet last month."
My stomach dropped.
May you like
My dad turned to me slowly.
And I realized that whatever I'd accidentally seen — whatever I'd kept quiet about because I didn't know what it meant — Tara had known about it the whole time.
