Chapter 28 #2
“But Crosbie, you have to understand that we thought it was best to get it out there,” she says, still not apologizing. “Rip the Band-Aid off.”
If I could wing my phone into the wall and see the screen shatter into pieces without it costing me anything, I would.
I used to get the same rush when my stepdad roared at us and I felt like I couldn’t yell back.
I was fearful of pissing off my mom, worried she would accuse me of sabotaging their marriage. I feel that same rush now.
“And you,” Fiona continues. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know,” she says. “Always focused on Jess. We figured you could use a little help doing what’s best for you, keeping you safe.”
Heat explodes in my cheeks. The hand holding the phone begins to tremble. I want to scream into it until she incinerates on the other end. Instead, I shake my head and hang up.
What a jerk to use my sister as an excuse for doing a greedy, self-serving thing. I understand now why my uncertainty about Fiona as early as in high school was justified.
My heart pounds and my mind whirs. My phone pings steadily. Announcements flash on the screen and seem to throb, hounding me until I swipe them clear. I catch glimpses of them without opening them:
If you’re a piece of shit, might as well fess up.
Just kill yourself now.
The truth will set you free.
What evil thing have you done? You deserve to die, PigBitch #ACAB
Even . . .
Ooooh . . . I love a dirty woman. Will you marry me?
Shit.
Allison and a few other friends call, and even my stepdad, but I don’t answer any of them. With our mom now gone, I hear from Les no more than three times a year—on my birthday, Christmas, and Thanksgiving—and as far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle that we have that much contact.
I need to think, but my phone screen pulls at me like an undertow.
I open Facebook to see more messages piling up.
Strangers berating me, telling me I need to confess my sins and make myself right with God, not just the killer.
That, of course, I deserve to die—that there is no way I didn’t do horrible things, if I was a cop.
All Cops Are Bad . . . #ACAB after #ACAB.
And about me, they’re right. I have no excuse. I did fall into the trap. Adhered to the code after all.
Other messages offer condolences, addressing me like I’m their best friend and conveying how sorry they are this is happening to me.
One person asks me what I plan to do with my Facebook page after the Confession Artist kills me, as if this issue would of course be top of mind.
But suddenly, it is. I can’t help it—I envision my phantom self, living on virtually in bits of data after the Confession Artist manages to fire a bullet into my brain.
My virtual heart pumping with each email and notification popping up for months and months, still trying to sell me everything the algorithmic fields suggest I buy.
It was the same with Sophie. Condolences mounted up after her suicide from people across the U of M campus and the town, too.
People addressed her specifically and personally, as if she could write them back to thank them or could pop in a thumbs-up to acknowledge them.
Hearts, praying hands, and happy faces peppered her page—a sad, hollow outpouring, after all the vitriol she’d endured.
I tried to convince Wallace to delete her pages on Facebook, Instagram, and the then Twitter, but he didn’t know her passcodes. Neither did I.
When I looked it up, I found that you needed to provide a scanned photo of the death certificate to each of the platforms to either memorialize the page or have it deleted.
Wallace never bothered, and eventually, we quit visiting her sites, though I still get reminders about her birthday once a year and occasionally receive a shared memory photo.
Enough about the damn past, I berate myself, wanting to throw something like I wanted to in the car, anything—my phone, my laptop, a coffee cup—across the room. I shake it off. Time to get to work.
I’ve stood up from my kitchen table to go into my office when my phone makes a different, disconcerting ping.
I realize it’s the surveillance app, alerting me to movement on one of the cameras.
It’s the one I set up to cover part of the driveway.
I open it, expecting a furry creature, but instead, the dark shape of a human passes.
I jolt back, my blood rushing, my heart in overdrive. I grab my Sig on the kitchen counter. My hands have barely quit quaking after talking to Fiona, but my gun hand, at least, goes rock steady when I squeeze the stock.
I kill the lights in the kitchen and dining area. I don’t plan on giving whoever it is the advantage of a clear view into my home. I creep across the wood floor on tiptoes, trying to move as stealthily as a cat.
When I get to the front door, I stand between it and one of the side windows, hold my gun before my chest with a cocked elbow, and crane my neck and peer through the side of the window.
Beyond my porch light, it’s pitch black, like a dark blanket has been spread across everything beyond my little world. I squint and will my eyes to penetrate past the glow, past the shadows and shifting shapes of trees in the breeze, but I can’t see anything more.
I listen.
All is silent.
My old training comes back. I hold the pistol close to my gut with elbows bent and brace it with both hands, wrists firm. Scuffling footsteps make their way across my gravel drive toward the house.
The room goes airless. The walls of my living room feel like they’re closing in on me. I’m holding my breath.
As the footsteps reach my front steps, I hit the porch light and throw open the door.