I lift a single middle finger in the air and shake it behind my head. “Record this and make me famous, asshole!”
Famous.
The word leaves behind a bitter taste. Famous for turning in my brother and my mother in order to keep my niece, my nephew, and my best friend safe. I shudder as memories from that night crash around me. The one where I thought I might have lost them all forever. The panicked phone call from my former sister-in-law turned best friend Whitney telling me that my brother stole their kids and disappeared. The frantic dash to the airport to get to them as soon as humanly possible.
A few months ago, I started receiving emails from this local true crime podcast,True Crime Lies,and I checked out his Insta. Not because I had an interest in the show, but I wanted to see what was being said about my family. The number of people—strangers—requesting our story was shocking. The commentswere dominated by people asking for the true story of Devon Thompson. Did he really fake his death? Did he really kidnap his kids? Was his ex-wife in on it for the insurance payout? Did his sister really turn over information?
The simple curiosity boiled over into people choosing sides. What felt like overnight, I had enemies. A cult of people I’ve never met deciding surely I must be guilty ofsomething.They hated me for it.
To me, the story isn’t all that interesting. The lived experience was traumatic, but not close to the other atrocities that happen every single day. My dumb brother got what he thought was a brilliant idea and blew up his life in the process. The insurance fraud would have been enough to land him in prison, but kidnapping his two children from another state and leading police on a manhunt really sealed his fate.
I push open the door to my favorite local coffee shop and let the scent of freshly ground beans wash away the memories. I’ve put it behind me. We all have. Whitney is living out her happily ever after with a hunk of a man and their kids in Minnesota, and I haven’t thought about it inages.
Until this asshole started poking around in my business.
“Good morning, Alice.” Archie whistles and tips his hat from the booth in the corner where he sips his Earl Grey tea. “Those boots are sharp.”
“Don’t you just love them?” I smash the toe into the tile and twist to give him all the angles. Sequins shimmer beneath the fluorescent lights.
“Tell me you’ve taken them for a spin on the dance floor.”
“Not yet. Might I see you at The Saloon this week? You could help me break them in.” I waggle my brows.
The skin above his bushy white beard stains a warm red, and the old man clutches his chest with a palm. “You’re going to give an old man a heart attack flirting like that.”
I move up to the dwindling line at the counter, pulling out my phone to double-check my glucose is still within an acceptable range. “As if you weren’t the one to teach half the girls there how to line dance. Including me.”
He chuckles into his porcelain mug.
Archie rents the townhome attached to mine. In the weeks following my brother’s very public arrest, the observant old widower noticed the change in my demeanor. He picked up on my fury quicker than anyone else in my life. Where everyone else expected me to be sad, he understood my anger. The betrayal from my own family. And rather than leaving me to deal with my pain, he convinced me to join him at The Saloon.
A spin on the dance floor will whip that anger right out of you, he said.
I won’t say he was right. Change does take time, after all. But I’ve been going weekly ever since.
The barista hands me my usual order at the counter, an iced black coffee with a splash of cream and a pump of sugar-free caramel, and I drop a dollar into the tip jar.
“Finally,” I sigh before taking a long drink. The silky bitterness explodes on my tongue.
Archie stands at the door. “Can I walk you home?”
Normally, I’d brush him off. But thoughts of that podcaster lingering around have me looping my hand into his elbow. “You may.”
He holds open the door for us to exit. “Got a package at my house that was meant for you.”
A light breeze blows a curl across my cheek. I pluck it from my face. “Oh really?”
He lifts a shoulder in a weak shrug. “In defense of the deliveryman, the last digit was smudged.”
“Mm-hmm. Sure. I’d believe that if this was the first time you’ve gotten my mail.”
“So maybe the new guy isn’t any good.” Archie scrubs his hand over his weathered brow.
“Nor were the last three.” I’ve been collecting my packages from Archie regularly over the years we’ve been neighbors. Those check-ins led to dinner invitations whenever I made too much food for one person, and an unconventional friendship formed.
His elbow nudges mine. “What’s bothering you?”
I scan the road ahead of us. “You haven’t seen anyone lingering near home lately, have you?”