“Fine,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. “Just checking the weather back home.”

“Looks miserable down south,” she said, wiping the laminate wood with a rag.

“It is,” I said.

I looked down at Harrison.

He had not woken up, though his little fingers twitched against the vinyl booth.

I tapped the screen again, closing the security feed.

I opened my secure browser and logged into the shared cloud account Julian and I had used for years.

I had kept the login active on an old tablet I brought with me.

Julian was clumsy with technology; he never checked which devices were authorized.

The screen refreshed.

A notification popped up immediately from his synced messaging app.

He was already texting Isabel.

I watched the dots appear and disappear as he typed, deleted, and typed again.

“We need to talk,” his message to her read. “Now.”

I sat in the dim light of the diner, watching the blue bubble on the screen.

Isabel did not reply immediately.

I knew she was likely sitting at her desk in the marketing department in Manhattan.