I shut the cabinet, locked it again, put the key back where I had found it.

And when I collapsed back into bed, my phone buzzed.

Anonymous. The restricted number.

Buzz.

Buzz.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

It wasn’t really the ‘dyke’ that bothered me. Entirely uninspired. Try again.

It wasn’t even the ‘Your dad deserved it’. That sounded almost childish, like some valued contributor to the human race was sitting around and twiddling their thumbs, thinking, ‘What’s the worst thing I could say to this bereaved individual?’

It was the ‘so will you’.

Not so did you. As in, you deserved his death and the repercussions of it. So will you. As in something that hadn’t even happened yet.

I thought about messaging back. Asking, ‘Um, yes, excuse me, are you sure you meant to threaten me?’ But it wasn’t the fear of the confrontation that held me back; it was the fear that they’d say more that I didn’t want to hear.

God. Who hated me enough to send this? Did I even have enemies?

Bea?

But she wouldn’t. Right? God. Maybe she’d been kind of a shitty person, but she wasn’t evil. Was she? And even if she was, why now? Why get back at me now?

I sucked on my sandpaper tongue. Screenshotted the conversation without replying and sent it to Olivia, who texted back almost immediately.

Her changing the subject so nonchalantly made my blood boil. Maybe she was trying to be helpful. Maybe she was just doing what I’d asked: pretending everything was the same. Regular programming. But nothing was the same; the decay was creeping into everything, and I was pretty sure I was the only person in the world who could see it.

October became November, and two Dad-less weeks became two Dad-less months. My encounter with June became a memory. Everything became death.