Marcus picked up the flash drive with two fingers as if it might burn him.
“Why?” he demanded, looking at his mother.
“I did nothing of the sort,” Diane said.
“Why, Mom?”
Diane looked at me for the first time since we had sat down. There was no anger in her face. There was something older than that, something tired and afraid, and for a second I saw a woman I had never met.
Then it was gone, and her chin lifted.
“Everything I did, I did for you. You’ll thank me one day.”
Marcus stared at her. He did not blink.
“You’ll thank me,” she repeated, softer now, as if convincing herself. “I saved you from something you couldn’t see. A mother does that. A mother sees.”
Ruth stepped back from the table but did not leave. Her hand rested on the empty chair like she was steadying it, or steadying herself.
I looked down at my hands in my lap.
The pale band on my finger had almost faded. Almost, but not quite.
Marcus set the flash drive Ruth had slid across the table beside his coffee, his hands trembling.
“It’s on my phone too,” Ruth said quietly. “Already cued. Keep the drive.”
She passed her phone to Marcus. He tapped play. Diane’s voice filled the space between our coffee cups, cold and precise, dictating which screenshots to forge.
The café went quiet around us.
