“These I managed to swipe from Lori’s phone when Ted and I visited earlier.”
The first was from Cheryl, four months earlier:
“Lori, I need you to stop inviting me. I’m engaged. This isn’t fair to him, Samantha, or to me.”
Lori replied:
“Mason is miserable, sweetheart. He needs a familiar face. Please, just a few more. Do it for him.”
Two months later, Cheryl wrote:
“This has to be the last one. I mean it.”
Lori answered:
“One more. He looked so sad last time.”
I stared at the pages.
For almost two years, I had seen Cheryl as my rival and compared myself to her at every gathering.
But she hadn’t been waiting for Mason. She had been asking Lori to leave her out of it.
She’d been a prop.
So had I.
I sat on the bedroom floor with the pages spread around me and practiced my opening.
“Thank you all for coming. I wanted to share something.”
I tried again.
“Thank you all for coming.”
Biscuit suddenly jumped onto the pile and sent screenshots skidding under the bed.
“Biscuit! I am trying to reclaim my dignity here!”
He blinked at me, unrepentant, then sat directly on one of Lori’s messages.
I laughed until my ribs hurt, cried a little, then laughed again.
Eventually, I gathered the pages and placed them in a plain manila folder.
No labels or highlighters.
Just the truth, in order.
The night before dinner, Mason found me putting the folder into my handbag.
“You’ve been quiet all night.”
“Have I?”
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