Chapter 6: What Brenda's Phone Captured
Brenda lived three houses down, in a yellow house with a vegetable garden along the side fence that she tended with more dedication than most people gave their careers.
She had been my neighbor for nineteen years.
She had sat with me the night my husband passed and not said a single unnecessary word.
She opened the door before I knocked.
"I saw your car," she said, and stepped back to let me in.
Her kitchen table had two cups of tea already on it.
She sat across from me and pushed one cup forward.
"I didn't know if I should say anything," she said.
"After the party.
I didn't want to make things worse."
"You called Gerald."
"I called Gerald." She wrapped both hands around her cup.
"I've known that man since your husband's first will.
I trusted him to know whether it mattered."
"Can I see it?"
She took her phone from her pocket and set it on the table between us.
The video was already queued.
It was forty-three seconds long.
Brenda had been filming when people gathered to sing — you could hear the beginning of Happy Birthday in the background, slightly out of tune.
The angle caught the table from the left side, which meant it caught Sloan's approach from the right.
I watched it once.
Then I watched it again.
Sloan's elbow didn't slip.
There was no stumble, no loss of balance, no accidental contact with another guest.
She turned her body slightly as she moved through the gap — a small, deliberate pivot — and her elbow came out and down in one clean motion.
Then she stepped back and her face reset into that frozen smile before the cake had even finished falling.
It lasted maybe two seconds.
But the camera had been steady and the light was good and every frame of it was clear.
"Brenda," I said.
"I know."
"This is—"
"I know, Lorraine."
I set the phone down.
My hands were steady but something behind my sternum was not.
"I kept telling myself I was imagining it," I said.
"For a whole year.
Every time something went missing or changed or got smaller.
I kept thinking I was being difficult.
That I was the problem."
Brenda looked at me directly.
"You were never the problem."
"Harrison kept saying—"
"Harrison was wrong." Her voice was quiet but there was no softness in it.
"And I think some part of him knew it, and he chose her version anyway, and that is a thing you are going to have to find a way to carry.
But you were never the problem."
I picked up my tea.
It had gone slightly cool.
"I need a copy of this video," I said.
"Already sent it to Gerald this morning.
He has it.
Patricia Vance has it.
And I have it backed up in two places." She paused.
"I also wrote down what I saw.
Date, time, description.
Gerald said a written statement might be useful."
"You did all of that."
"You would have done it for me."
I looked at her across the table.
Nineteen years of small kindnesses — borrowed eggs, shared garden cuttings, a hand on my arm at a graveside.
"What do I do about Harrison?" I asked.
Not to Patricia.
Not to Gerald.
To Brenda, who had known him since he was in high school and used to steal tomatoes from her garden.
She was quiet for a moment.
"I think," she said carefully, "that you have to let him see what she is.
And I think you have to accept that he might choose her anyway.
And I think if he does, that will be the hardest thing.
Not the money.
Not the house.
Him."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"He said 'she knows,'" I told her.
"On the phone.
Like I was the threat."
Brenda nodded slowly.
"Then he's already chosen.
For now." She reached across and put her hand over mine, just briefly.
"That doesn't mean forever."
I drove home with the copy of the video on my own phone and Brenda's words sitting somewhere in my chest where I couldn't quite reach them yet.
May you like
When I pulled into the driveway, Harrison's car was gone.
Sloan's was still there.
