Chapter 2 - The Social Feed
The drive back to their two-bedroom townhouse was conducted in near-total silence, broken only by the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers and the soft whir of the heater.
Clara kept her right hand resting over Maya’s on the center console. She didn't interrogate the child. She didn't ask her how cold she had been or how many times she had walked to the window to look for Arthur’s silver Buick. She knew the answers, and every imaginary detail made her throat feel tight with bile.
When they got inside, Clara immediately set to work. She ran a hot bath for Maya, dropped in the last of the lavender bath salts she usually saved for bad days, and made a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup.
She watched from the doorway as Maya sat in the tub, floating a yellow plastic duck between her knees, her small shoulders finally relaxing as the steam filled the room.
"Mom?" Maya asked, looking through the vapor.
"Yes, peanut?"
"Is Aunt Vanessa mad at us?"
Clara frowned, stepping in to drape a warm towel over the radiator. "Why would Aunt Vanessa be mad at us?"
"Grandpa told Aunt Vanessa last Sunday that taking care of me was 'stifling,'" Maya said, her voice matter-of-fact as she traced a circle in the water. "He said you were taking advantage of his good nature because you didn't want to pay a babysitter like normal people do."
Clara felt the breath leave her lungs in a sharp, silent gasp.
*Taking advantage of his good nature.*
Arthur had said that. Arthur, who drove a 2021 Buick Enclave with heated leather seats. Arthur, who lived in a four-bedroom colonial in the upscale shaded hills of Crestview Estates. Arthur, who spent four mornings a week playing nine holes at the municipal golf course and the other three complaining about the price of imported coffee.
"Your grandfather was mistaken, Maya," Clara said, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm register. "Eat your dinner when you get out. We have a lot of things to organize tonight."
Once Maya was tucked into bed, drifting off to the low rumble of an audiobook playing from the bedside speaker, Clara walked into her small kitchen. She didn't turn on the overhead light. She stood in the pale glow of the open refrigerator, drinking a glass of cold tap water until her teeth ached.
Her phone sat on the granite counter.
It buzzed once.
It wasn't an apology from Arthur. It wasn't an inquiry from Evelyn asking if they had made it home safely through the sleet.
It was an automated notification from Instagram: *Vanessa_Style_Mom has updated her story.*
Clara unlocked the screen. Her fingers were steady now, entirely drained of adrenaline, replaced by that cold, mechanical precision that took over during a code blue.
She tapped the circle.
The first video was a boomerang clip: a bright red cocktail glass with a sugared rim being clinked against a tall tumbler of bourbon. The caption read: *“Celebrating Dad’s freedom! Best grandpa in the world treating his favorite crew! #FamilyFirst #GrandpaGoals #SteakNight.”*
Clara tapped through to the next slide.
It was a photograph taken four hours earlier at the city zoo. The sunlight had broken through the morning clouds then, bathing the concrete plaza in front of the sea lion exhibit in golden light.
There stood Arthur. He looked radiant. He was wearing his expensive North Face fleece—the one Clara had bought him for his sixty-fifth birthday—with his arms slung securely around Vanessa’s seven-year-old twin boys, Leo and Mason. Both boys were clutching massive, neon-blue sticks of cotton candy that cost twelve dollars apiece. Arthur was laughing, his head thrown back, looking ten years younger than his age.
Behind them stood Vanessa, holding an oversized plush penguin, pouting playfully at the camera with her designer sunglasses propped on her highlighted hair.
The caption beneath the photo was what Arthur had apparently said to Vanessa’s boys:
*“Grandpa said: ‘The zoo is for winners, boys. We don’t sit around waiting on hospital shifts today!’ Best spontaneous Tuesday ever!”*
Clara stared at the screen for a full two minutes.
She didn't cry. The time for crying had ended three years ago when her ex-husband signed away his parental rights and moved to Singapore, leaving her with eighty-four thousand dollars in marital credit card debt that she had systematically paid down while working sixty hours a week.
She looked around her kitchen. It was modest. The laminate cabinets were clean but aging. The appliances were standard builder-grade. She had spent the last seven years scrimping, couponing, packing brown-bag lunches of hard-boiled eggs and leftover rice so she could maximize her savings.
And why had she been saving?
Why had she worked an extra four weekend shifts a month for the last five years?
Clara walked down the short hallway into her home office—a glorified closet containing an IKEA desk, a filing cabinet, and a desktop computer.
She pulled open the bottom drawer of the heavy metal filing cabinet. From the very back, behind her tax returns and Maya’s vaccination records, she extracted a thick, blue legal folder labeled: *CRESTVIEW PROPERTY & FINANCIAL GUARANTY.*
She flipped it open under the yellow glow of the desk lamp.
There, on the crisp parchment of a deed-of-trust transfer and an irrevocable personal debt-assumption contract, was Arthur Jenkins’s sprawling, unkempt signature from seven years prior.
Directly beside it was Clara’s signature.
Her family had very short memories.
They seemed to have completely forgotten why Arthur was living so comfortably in Crestview Estates. They had forgotten why the bank hadn't auctioned that four-bedroom house on the courthouse steps back in 2017 when Arthur’s disastrous speculative investment in a logistics franchise went belly-up. They had forgotten whose name was on the master deed, whose checking account made the monthly mortgage wire transfer, and who held the personal guarantee on the credit line that kept Vanessa’s failing downtown boutique afloat.
They thought she was a doormat because she was quiet. They thought she was a servant because she had chosen a profession centered on care.
Evelyn’s words echoed in Clara’s skull:
*“He deserves to enjoy his retirement without being treated like your personal, unpaid Uber driver.”*
"You're right, Mom," Clara whispered to the quiet room. "He does."
May you like
She pulled out her personal address book, turned to the letter *V*, and picked up her phone.
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