Lymber craft's Arc

Chapter 24 of 70

The graduation photo came back on a Tuesday. Lymber saw it first on her phone while Violetta napped in the bouncer. Someone had cropped the picture of her walking across the stage with Violetta on her hip and added a caption she would not repeat. It had two thousand shares by lunch. She scrolled and found more. Old classmates. Strangers. A joke about the bottle in Paul's hand. A joke about her hair. A joke about the baby's face. She set the phone facedown on the counter and stared at the wall until the microwave clock changed. Paul came in from the yard with grass on his shoes. She showed him the phone. He read it and did not say anything for a long time. Then he said, delete it. She said, I can't delete other people's posts. He said, delete yours. Delete the accounts. All of them. She looked at him. He said, they've had enough of you. She thought about the followers, the blog, the ad money, the countdown posts, the interview, every careful thing she had built to steer the story. She thought about Violetta growing up and searching her own name one day. She picked the phone back up. She sat on the couch and worked through them one at a time. She saved the photos she wanted to keep to a folder on the laptop. Then she deleted the main account. Then the blog. Then the backup account she had kept for spying. Each one asked if she was sure. Each one she said yes. Paul brought her a glass of water and sat on the arm of the couch. Violetta woke and fussed, and he lifted her out of the bouncer and walked her around the small front room of the rental. Three beds, one bath, a kitchen you could touch both walls in. Lymber watched him bounce their daughter against his shoulder and pressed the last confirm button. The screen went blank. Her name was gone from the internet. That night she felt strange. Light in the arms, heavy in the stomach. She thought it was the deleting. In the bathroom she opened the drawer for a pad and counted back and stopped counting. She had not needed one since before the move. She sat on the edge of the tub. She had a test left in the box from before Violetta, tucked behind the extra soap. She took it. Three minutes on the counter, and the second line came up dark and fast. She held the strip in her hand and did not call for Paul yet. Violetta was nine months old. She sat there in the small bathroom of the small house and understood that the town would find out eventually, and this time she would not have social media to tell them first.