Chapter 4

The landlord handed me an iron key and only took one month's deposit.

The room had no closet. Four black plastic bags set down against the wall already filled one corner.

In the fold of my wallet was the emergency contact card I'd filled out three years ago. It carried only Marcus Vance's name and number.

I didn't deal with it right away. I closed the wallet again.

The clock in the corner of my screen ticked to nine in the morning. I logged into the company intranet and submitted my resignation electronically.

At eleven, I went to the orphanage where I'd grown up.

The director took the bank transfer receipt.

"This fifty thousand was your wedding money, wasn't it?"

"The wedding's off."

"What are your plans now?"

"A different city. I'll get myself settled first."

The director pushed the receipt back.

"Keep the money on you. You'll need it to live wherever you go."

I handed it back again.

"The roof here needs fixing. This money's more useful than a wedding gown."

After I left the orphanage, I called the wedding planner.

The manager heard out my cancellation and pulled up the contract.

"Miss Fox, you're the bride on this contract, so you have the right to cancel. But Mr. Vance has already told us to keep preparing as planned."

"Then stop using my photo."

"Mr. Vance won't agree to that."

I picked out a black-and-white ID photo from my phone.

"If he insists on going ahead, swap the entryway portrait for this one, and change the flowers to white chrysanthemums."

The manager didn't take the file right away.

"That would look like a funeral."

"The engagement's dead. It suits."

I paid the fee to change the arrangements and sent the image over.

At one in the afternoon, the HR manager called.

"Director Fox, Mr. Vance rejected your resignation."

I looked at the red returned mark on the screen.

"The contract lets employees give notice in advance."

"Mr. Vance has already logged you as absent without leave. He wants you back at the office now to hand off your work to Molly Pruitt."

"The project files have been sent to your work email."

"Miss Pruitt can't read the reports. Several clients have meetings this afternoon. Come back and walk her through it once."

"Let Marcus teach her."

The manager paused a moment.

"Director Fox, don't dig in like this. Mr. Vance says your life belongs to him. Once you've made your point, come back and apologize."

"What I want is my remaining pay and the project bonus."

"Director Fox, come back first, then we'll talk."

"We'll talk at the labor arbitration board."

I ended the call and blocked the company's number.

At three, a hundred verification codes hit my phone in a row.

App sign-ups, lending platforms, and food-delivery accounts kept popping up one after another, and within minutes my private messages jumped by tens of thousands.

Bob Gilbert had posted a long essay with photos.

The first showed the mango mousse in a trash can. The second showed a red mark of unknown origin on Molly Pruitt's wrist.

He claimed I had hijacked Molly's life, deliberately shoved Marcus and injured him, and spent years using the engagement to torment a sick woman.

Tens of thousands of comments piled up fast.

"She'd even hurt the man who saved her life. Why doesn't someone like that just die?"

"She's an orphan. No wonder nobody raised her right."

"Find her company and her address."

The codes were still covering the screen when Wendy Vance sent a piece of surveillance footage.

On it, the white cat I'd raised for five years was locked out on the balcony of the wedding home.

Rain struck the glass, and it kept clawing at the door.

Molly Pruitt stood inside and bolted the balcony door shut.

Below the video was a voice message.

"Molly's allergic to cat fur. Your cat ran off on its own. Don't go pinning that on us again."

I called three times in a row. Wendy rejected every one.

By the time I reached the villa complex, the balcony was empty.

A security guard blocked the entrance.

"Mr. Vance's orders. You're not allowed in."

"My cat's still inside."

"The residents say there's no cat."

I held the footage up in front of him.

"It went out from the balcony. It might still be in the complex. Let me in to look."

The guard only glanced at it.

"Rain this heavy, once it ran off nobody's finding it."

I searched the shrubs and the garage exit for four hours.

When my voice gave out, I struck the roadside railing with the iron key.

Every time it heard that sound, it used to come running and rub against my shoe.

The echo off the railing scattered into the rain. No cat answered.

Below the mountain highway outside the complex ran a drainage ditch.

A small patch of white showed through the mud. I braced against the ditch wall and slid down.

The white cat lay in the drainage ditch, its belly crushed under a vehicle, a full tire mark left across it.

The bell on its collar was sunk in the mud. I picked it up, and the clapper gave only one faint ring.

Its ears had already gone cold.

Muddy water ran into my sleeves. I knelt in the ditch, reaching again and again, unable to lift it into my arms.

My heart felt stopped up by that bloody mud, and I held the cold body stiffly against me, unable even to make a sound of crying.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Marcus had sent a message.

"Quit playing dead! What's the trick, using a dumb animal for a show? Get back to the office now and teach Molly how to read the reports!"

I posted the balcony footage and the photos of the white cat to my page.

The caption was a single line.

"Whoever locked that door, be ready to answer for it."

Once it posted, I deleted Marcus and blocked his account.

I carried the white cat against me, muddy water dripping from my hem the whole way.

The pedestrian light at the intersection had turned green.

As I reached the center of the road, a run of horn blasts came from the right.

A heavy dump truck ran the red light and barreled toward the crosswalk.

Its headlights lit the tire mark on the white cat's body.

I only had time to turn my body and shield it against my chest.

The impact threw me off the ground. My phone landed in front of the wheel, the screen and that order shattering into pieces.

On the broken screen, the last line Marcus had sent lit up: "Your life belongs to me. Without my say-so, you don't get to go anywhere?!"