Chapter 3: The Woman on the Other End
Daniel stared at the message for a long moment.
Then he picked up the phone and called the number.
It rang twice.
A woman answered.
Her voice was steady, but only just.
"Is this Daniel Marsh?"
"It is," he said.
"Who is this?"
"My name is Patricia Holt.
I was married to your uncle Raymond for six years." A pause.
"Until Linda showed him proof I was cheating too."
The kitchen went quiet in a different way than before.
Not the silence of shock.
The silence of something clicking into place.
Daniel turned slowly toward his mother.
Linda had taken a step back toward the hallway.
Her chin was up, but her eyes had moved to the door.
"Patricia," Daniel said carefully, "what happened to your marriage?"
"Raymond divorced me.
I lost the house.
I lost custody of my son for two years while the courts sorted out what was real." Her voice didn't waver, but something underneath it did.
"It took me four years to prove those messages were fabricated.
By then Raymond had remarried and my son barely knew me."
I sat down at the kitchen table.
My legs had stopped working properly.
"How did you know to contact us?" Daniel asked.
"A friend of mine saw your wife's name come up in a Facebook group.
Women comparing notes on fake screenshot tools.
Someone had used the same generator — same font, same timestamp format.
I recognized it immediately." Another pause.
"I've been waiting three years for someone else to find what I found."
Daniel set the phone on the counter and put it on speaker.
He didn't look at me.
He looked at Linda.
"Mom."
"Daniel, I don't know this woman—"
"Mom."
"She could be anyone.
She could be someone your wife put up to this—"
"Patricia," Daniel said to the phone, "did you keep any of the original files?"
"I kept everything," Patricia said.
"My lawyer has copies.
The metadata on the fabricated screenshots traces back to a device registered in Millfield." She paused.
"That's your mother's town, isn't it."
Linda moved toward the hallway.
"Don't." Daniel's voice was quiet.
It stopped her completely.
Chloe had come down the last two stairs and was standing in the kitchen doorway.
She was watching her grandmother with an expression no seven-year-old should have to wear — not fear, not anger, something worse.
Recognition.
"Grandma," Chloe said, "are you going to lie again?"
Linda's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Daniel walked to the hallway and stood between his mother and the door.
"Sit down," he said.
"We're not finished."
Linda sat.
For the first time since I had known her, she looked small.
Patricia's voice came through the speaker again, quieter now.
"Mrs.
Marsh — your wife, I mean — I'm sorry it took this long for someone to find you.
I should have kept looking."
I couldn't answer her right away.
I pressed my hand flat on the table and focused on the grain of the wood until I could speak.
"You found us," I finally said.
"That's what matters."
But even as I said it, I knew we were nowhere near the end of this.
Patricia's files were in another city.
Linda was sitting ten feet away with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes fixed on the middle distance, and I had no idea what she was calculating behind that stillness.
Daniel's phone buzzed again.
A different number this time.
May you like
He looked at the screen and went very still.
"It's Raymond," he said.
