Part Two: The Thumbs-Up

My daughter-in-law, Sarah, replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

That was all. One little yellow thumb, sent forty seconds after Tommy’s message. As if he’d asked who was bringing rolls.

I watched the screen. The little Seen by notice appeared at the bottom of the chat and filled up name by name. Seen by Sarah. Seen by Mark. Seen by Betty. Seen by Emma. My younger son, Mark, saw the message and said nothing. My sister, Betty, who’s sixty-eight and lives fifteen minutes away in Warner Robins and has eaten Thanksgiving dinner at my table for thirty years, saw it and didn’t respond. My granddaughter Emma, who’s sixteen, saw it too.

Not a single person protested. Nobody spoke up for me.

I turned off the burner under the soup. I stood there in my kitchen with the phone in my hand and the radio playing “White Christmas,” and I felt something go very still inside me.

Then I took a screenshot.

I learned that a long time ago, from my late husband, Bill. He ran a plumbing and heating business for forty years, and he used to say that people will argue with your memory until the cows come home, but they can’t argue with a piece of paper. Write it down, Joanie, he’d say. Write everything down.

So I took a screenshot of the message and the thumbs-up and the long list of names under Seen by. Then I began scrolling back through the older conversations.