Then my phone lit up between us.
A text from Vanessa.
Last chance. Apologize publicly at the HOA meeting on the 14th. I’ll be expecting you.
Irvin looked at the screen for a long moment. Then he held out his hand.
“Give me your phone,” he said. “If we’re going to decide what to do, I want to see exactly what she’s been showing people.”
I handed it over. He pulled up the screenshots on my phone, then opened the same conversations on his own, and started comparing them side by side, line by line.
I watched him scroll. Then I watched him stop.
“Claire,” he said. “Come here.”
I came around the table and looked over his shoulder.
Vanessa hadn’t just picked the most flattering messages. She had cropped them.
In one conversation, she’d written: Wish I had a man like you. That was the line she’d sent around the neighborhood. What she’d cut off was Irvin’s reply, right underneath it:
