Vera. The reliable distraction. “It looks like we’ll be coming home to a messy house. I hope that Vera at least puts Eliot and Syd to bed before we get home.”

Oliver grunted, his passive-aggressive way of moving on without actually moving on. He was still angry at me, though I doubted he remembered why. That’s what grudge-holders do. It was the Portman Family Plague; we were gifted grudges.

The downpour hit just as we turned onto our street. Rain smeared across the windshield as we pulled into our winding orange brick driveway that matched the orange brick of our three-story Second Empire Victorian home. My stomach churned from looking at my phone. The perils of carsickness were unavoidable when multitasking on my phone while in motion, which mainly consisted of scrolling through my Facebook and Instagram feed. I’d never actually hurled, but the tiramisu was knocking at the door.

I liked several posts of my friends’ book club picks, kids, pets, inspirational memes, and spring flower gardens, then clicked over to Vera’s profile. Sure, I was being sus, a Vera-ism for “suspicious,” but I always checked her Instagram just to make sure everything she posted was parent-approved. It had been a big battle when she first wanted a phone, then a war when she wanted to join social media, so I obliged only after her assurance that if I ever found anything sus, I’d take away her phone and disable her social media accounts. Our mutually-agreed definition of sus was yet to be determined.

Vera mostly posted drawings. The artist within her was emerging, a blooming talent she inherited from her father, not me. I first noticed it when she turned ten. It was sweet how she avidly watched her dad design my new business logo for a dog grooming venture, Barkalicious Boutique. Her eyes had traced his graphite sketch pencil swirling confidently across the paper. That’s when her spark ignited. The calligraphy and acrylic paint sets we bought her that year for Christmas fanned the flame.

Thunder shook the car as Oliver rolled to a stop. I was flicking through the last post before putting my phone away when an image held me captive. A photo that tagged a @blythesampson4ever in a tribal design image. A pretty, swirly triangular design. Inked on pale flesh.

That looked way too much like Vera’s skin. And way too much like a tattoo. A tattoo that Vera knew better than to desecrate her underage body with.

“You ready to run?” Oliver asked me.

“Huh?” Momentarily confused, I glanced up at him, his hand cradling the door handle.

“To the porch. I’ll hold my jacket over you while we run.”

“Oh, yeah.” I’d table the conversation about the ink in question until we got inside.