The Lie Did Not Fit

I keep thinking about the moment Tamsin spoke through the glass. Not because it rescued me. Because it made the accusation so small and so deliberate that I wanted to throw every fact I had at Leona and watch her scramble.

The timestamp is clean. That should feel like vindication. Instead, I keep checking the copied time as if the numbers might quietly change and leave me standing there with nothing but my word against a polished lie.

Being called an abandonment facilitator in front of officers and a reporter was ugly, but the worse part was how quickly I wanted to become it. If they already think I am the woman who leaves people behind, I can play the role. I can be hard, efficient, impossible to pity. I do not have to admit that Tamsin mattered to me, or that hearing her correct the record made me feel like I had been seen through a wall.

My shoulder is still throbbing. I should rest it. I am more interested in proving that Leona’s version has a seam in it.

I saved the timestamp in separate files. That is not caution; it is panic pretending to be procedure. Somewhere beneath my mother’s house, I am waiting for the old fear that I only become brave when someone else is in danger.