Chapter 3: What He Posted
Nathan typed without rushing.
His thumb moved steadily across the screen while Patricia sat upright in bed, her hand still on his arm, not quite gripping it anymore.
I watched from the doorway.
I didn't move.
He turned the phone around so she could read it.
Her face went from red to white.
"Good morning to everyone who actually gets up, goes to work, and takes care of their family — and to the ones who get sick and still manage to be better people than those who mock them.
This is my wife.
She had a 102-degree fever when this photo was taken.
She hadn't slept in eighteen hours.
And someone who had a spare key to our home walked in and took her picture to post online.
I think you all know who that someone is."
He'd attached both photos side by side.
Me, pale and barely sitting up.
Patricia, eyes half-open, hair loose, tucked under her own covers at five in the morning.
"Nathan." Her voice came out thin.
"Delete that right now."
"Why?"
"Because it's not the same thing and you know it."
"Then explain the difference to me," he said.
"Slowly.
Because I've been trying to understand it for four days and I still can't."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at me.
"This is your doing," she said.
"You put him up to this."
I hadn't said a single word since we'd walked in.
I stayed quiet now.
Nathan answered for me.
"She asked me not to do anything.
I made this decision myself."
"You are humiliating your own mother."
"You humiliated my wife in front of three hundred people while she was sick in bed.
I showed one photo of you sleeping.
I'd say we're not even close to even."
Patricia threw the covers back and stood up.
She was wearing a blue housecoat, her hair flat on one side.
She pointed at me.
"I have never liked you," she said.
"I have tolerated you for Nathan's sake, but I have never once thought you were good enough for my son.
And nothing about tonight changes that."
The words landed the way she intended them to.
I felt them in my chest.
But Nathan stepped between us.
"Then you should have kept that opinion to yourself," he said.
"Because the moment you walked into our home without calling and posted that photo, you made it everyone's business."
Patricia's chin lifted.
"I was trying to show him what kind of wife he has."
"He already knows what kind of wife he has.
He married her."
She turned away from him and walked to her dresser.
Her hands moved over the surface — a hairbrush, a glass of water, a folded piece of paper — and then she stopped.
Her fingers rested on the folded paper.
Something about the way she touched it made me look twice.
Nathan was still talking.
"I need you to take the post down, Mom.
The original one.
Today."
"And if I don't?"
"Then mine stays up."
She turned back around.
Her expression had shifted.
The anger was still there, but underneath it was something else.
Something careful.
"Fine," she said.
"I'll take it down."
Nathan nodded.
"Thank you."
"But I want you to understand something." She looked at me again, not at him.
"This isn't finished."
May you like
I didn't look away from her.
She picked up the folded piece of paper from the dresser and slipped it into her housecoat pocket before either of us could see what it was.
