Chapter 3 - THE MESSAGE CAROL SHOULDN’T HAVE SENT
Claire slept badly and woke with a bruise darkening on her forearm.
She photographed it in Melissa’s bathroom mirror, then called her supervisor to say she wouldn’t be in for her outpatient shift at the rehab clinic. After that, she booked an urgent-care appointment.
The doctor noted mild soft-tissue injury from grabbing. Nothing dramatic. Nothing broken. Still, Claire asked for copies of everything.
At 10:12 a.m., Carol called.
Claire almost let it ring out.
“I didn’t know he was going to do that,” Carol said without greeting.
“Do what?”
“Grab you. Speak to you like that.”
Claire leaned against the hood of her car in the urgent-care parking lot.
“But you knew he was on edge.”
Silence.
“Carol?”
“I knew Ava planned to needle you.”
Claire straightened.
“What does that mean?”
Carol’s voice thinned. “She’d been in one of those moods all morning. Sarcastic. Looking for a reaction.”
“That’s not the same as screaming I touched her.”
“No,” Carol said softly. “It isn’t.”
Claire waited, but Carol didn’t say more.
Instead she asked the question Claire had been circling since yesterday.
“Did Ava take my bracelet?”
Carol exhaled sharply. “She picked it up before Daniel could.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire didn’t believe her.
“You know something.”
“I know Daniel’s been under pressure.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Carol lowered her voice, as if someone might overhear from another room.
“Claire, don’t make yesterday bigger than it was.”
It was such a familiar sentence that it made Claire suddenly calm.
Bigger than it was.
As if the injury were not Daniel’s hand on her.
As if the problem were the size she gave it after.
“If you want to help,” Claire said, “tell me the truth.”
Carol didn’t.
But twenty minutes later, a photo came through by text.
It was Claire’s bracelet on Daniel’s kitchen counter.
Beside it sat a folded scrap of paper with Ava’s handwriting on the outside:
Don’t let him see this.
By the time Claire texted back, Carol had unsent the photo.
May you like
Too late.
Claire had already saved the screenshot.
