Chapter 2

“Since when is that your business?”

“If I don't look after you, who will?”

Dale squeezed through the door and set the hot porridge and stomach medicine on the table.

“I know car rides wreck your stomach. I ran two streets over for this.”

“No cilantro.”

He popped a pill out of the blister pack and held it to my lips.

“Open up.”

I turned my face away.

“Weren't you keeping Antonia company?”

“I came the second her scans were done.”

He sighed and pulled me into his arms.

“She hurt her foot. Was I supposed to just leave her?”

“You're not like her.”

“She needs looking after. You're the one I'm going to spend my life with.”

Dale bent his head and kissed my temple.

“Sadie, don't measure yourself against her.”

So Antonia was the one who deserved to be cherished.

And I only rated the place he'd arranged for me.

“Did the application system really crash?”

Dale's expression didn't change.

“Why are you back on this again?”

“I want to see the submission record.”

“The examinations board already said it was a system problem. What else is there to look at?”

“Which examinations board?”

His hand stilled for an instant, then flicked my forehead.

“Checking up on me?”

“Fine. I'll dig up the emails for you tomorrow.”

“And once you've read them, no more of this nonsense in your head.”

He was too calm.

Calm the way he'd been on the field, as if the confession were nothing more than a harmless joke.

Dale rebooked me a room at a chain hotel, on the same floor as Antonia's mother.

The doorbell had barely rung before Antonia walked in wearing his jacket, water still dripping from the ends of her hair.

“I left my charger in his laptop bag.”

She opened Dale's laptop and typed a string of numbers into the lock screen.

The screen lit up.

The password was her birthday.

Antonia noticed me watching, and her hands paused.

“Dale's always forgetting his password, so I set it for him.”

“Don't read into it.”

She took the charger and left.

When Dale came out of the shower, his eyes went straight to the door.

“Was Antonia here?”

“Is her foot still swollen?”

Only after the words were out did he seem to remember me, lifting me onto the bed.

“I'm staying with you tonight.”

“Tomorrow's your birthday. I've got a present ready.”

He wrapped an arm around my waist from behind.

“No more sulking over her, all right?”

Half an hour later his breathing had gone even.

I lifted his arm off me and went to the laptop.

Sure enough, Antonia's birthday unlocked it.

In the bottom-right corner of the desktop was a screenshot named “Sadie Final Applications.”

Created June twenty-eighth, eleven forty-three at night.

Seventeen minutes before the system closed.

The “submitted successfully” screenshot he'd sent me was timestamped eleven fifty-seven.

I zoomed in on the image.

There was no green confirmation receipt at the bottom of the page.

Just one line of small print, most of it cropped away.

【Application information not yet confirmed.】

I recorded the file properties, then opened the messaging app.

The pinned contact was Antonia.

The key text from June twenty-eighth had been deleted, but two voice messages remained.

“The verification code came through.”

It was Dale's voice.

Right after it, Antonia pushing him along “Five minutes left. Delete it, quick.”

I recorded the whole screen and uploaded it to the cloud.

As I backed out, an empty folder in the corner of the desktop caught my eye.

【Southbay Meteorology Science Camp】

There was nothing inside it.

I was about to check the deletion log when Dale's voice came from behind me.

“Sadie.”

My whole body went rigid.

He didn't open his eyes, just reached a hand out toward me.

“Come back.”

Like every night of the past seventeen years.

He was certain I'd come back into his arms.

I closed the laptop.

This time, I didn't take his hand.

After daybreak, I printed all the screenshots at the hotel front desk.

Before I left for the birthday party, I slipped a voice recorder into the inner pocket of my backpack and pressed record.