Chapter 3: What the Messages Said
Richard held the phone out toward Nick.
His hand was steady.
His face was not.
"I found it on the kitchen counter," he said.
"I wasn't looking for anything.
I just saw the screen light up."
Nick took it.
Susan moved toward him.
"Nick, don't—"
"Stop." He didn't look up.
"Don't say another word."
The backyard went silent.
A bird called somewhere over the fence.
Nick's eyes moved across the screen, and I watched his jaw tighten with each line he read.
"This is my number," I said quietly.
"That's my contact name in her phone."
"I know." His voice had gone flat.
"Nick.
I never wrote those messages.
I never touched her phone.
I didn't even know she had my number saved."
He turned the screen toward me.
I read it once.
Then again.
The messages were written to sound exactly like me.
The rhythm, the way I abbreviated words, even the small habit I had of ending sentences with a dash instead of a period.
Whoever had written them had studied the way I texted.
*I need space.
This isn't working anymore.
Tell Nick I'm sorry but I'm done.
—H*
*Please don't have him call me.
I've already moved on.
It's better this way.*
My stomach turned.
"She copied my style," I said.
"She had two months of your texts to work from," Richard said.
He was looking at Susan.
"She went through Nick's phone while he was still in the hospital.
Before he was even fully conscious."
"That's not—" Susan started.
"I saw you do it," Richard said.
"I didn't understand what you were doing at the time.
I thought you were looking for something to help with his care." He shook his head.
"I should have asked."
Susan's chin lifted.
"I did what needed to be done."
"You faked messages from my phone," I said.
The words felt strange in my mouth.
Too simple for what they actually meant.
"You made Nick believe I abandoned him while he was lying in a hospital bed."
"You had already left."
"I left for two days.
We had an argument.
That's normal.
That's what people do."
"You weren't right for him."
"That was not your choice to make!"
Nick set the phone down on the patio table.
Carefully.
Like he didn't trust his own hands.
"How long was I in the hospital?" he asked.
"Eleven days," Richard said.
"And she never came?"
"She didn't know you were there.
She thought you were—" Richard stopped.
Nick turned to Susan.
"You called her before I was even out of surgery."
Susan said nothing.
"I was in the ICU and you called my fiancée and told her I was de@d." His voice didn't rise.
It dropped.
"And then you came back to my room and you sat next to my bed and you held my hand."
The patio furniture cast long shadows across the concrete.
"I love you," Susan said.
"Everything I did, I did because I love you."
"Don't." Nick stepped back from her.
"Don't say that right now."
"Nick—"
"I spent two months thinking she didn't care enough to call." He looked at me.
There was something raw in his face, something that hadn't been there before the accident, a kind of careful distance he'd been wearing like armor.
"I spent two months thinking you chose to leave."
"I spent two months thinking you were gone," I said.
We stood there looking at each other across the patio.
Richard picked up the phone again.
"There's more," he said quietly.
"Scroll further back.
Before the accident."
Nick frowned.
"What do you mean, before?"
Richard held his gaze.
"Just scroll back."
Nick took the phone.
His thumb moved slowly.
Then it stopped.
"What is this?" he said.
He turned the screen toward his father.
Richard looked at it and nodded once, like he'd already known it was there, like he'd been dreading this moment.
"What is it?" I asked.
Nick looked up at me.
Then at Susan.
"There's a contact in here," he said slowly.
"Someone she's been texting for over a year." He turned the phone around so I could see the name.
"Do you know who this is?"
I looked at the screen.
May you like
The name meant nothing to me.
But the look on Susan's face told me it should.
