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There are five messages. That’s it. Nothing in his send folder. Nothing in his spam folder. Nothing in his draft folder. Five messages and all of them say unread.

Until I click on them. I start with the oldest, which is from just a few hours ago. Right after he left for work. It’s some kind of production schedule from Larry, his agent. And once I check, they are all from Larry, only from different accounts. The newest one—subject line: Invitation that you will regret, so don’t blame me—is from another Larry account.

I don’t get it. Why is this Black Bash thing so strange? It’s setting off alarm bells for me. I just can’t put the pieces together to understand why.

I open it, of course, and I’m staring at something that looks like an online plane ticket. The kind where you just flash your phone at the scanner to board, and it reads the code.

This party that seems to be a huge deal, but for all the wrong reasons, has a barcode embedded into the invitation.

Why?

The phone rings again, and I jump up so fast I knock the phone over and it answers.

“Hello?” the woman’s voice says on the other end of the line. “V?”

I do not move. I do not say a word.

“Well, that’s weird,” she says under her breath. “If this is the message, V, I’m telling you this as a friend, stay away from the Black Bash. OK? Just stay away. Later.”

What the hell is going on?

I wait a few seconds to make absolutely sure she’s hung up the line, and then I pick up the phone, mark all his emails as unread, and then turn the monitor off.

I’m just about to walk out and mind my own damn business when I have an idea.

It’s not an idea I’m proud of, but I have one and once it’s in my mind, I can’t not do it.

I go back to the computer and access that email with the ticket. I forward it to my own email account and erase the message. Then I erase the phone messages too.

It’s wrong, I know it. But I have a bad feeling about this party. And if people are coming out of the woodwork to warn him off, it’s my duty as his wife to help keep him away.

If he asks for it, I still have it. I’ll give it to him after we discuss.

But only if he asks.

I leave his office and go back out to the living room and have a seat. Put my feet up. Turn on the TV. Change channels for like five minutes. Turn the TV off.

I check the clock. It’s only three. I have five hours until Vaughn comes home.

I get up and check the fridge. Close it up after staring for two minutes. Sit back down at the bar. Flip through old mail—hey, there’s a letter from my bank in Denver. Open it and understand like two words on that statement aside from the bank balance, which has to be wrong, because it says ninety thousand dollars. Tuck that statement back into the envelope and put a sticky note on it with the letters WTF. Vaughn can deal with that. I have no clue.

Check the clock again. Three fifteen.

Scream.

Not really. It’s a sigh. But I feel like screaming, that’s for sure. What the hell am I supposed to be doing all day?

I list my possibilities. I have a car. I can go shopping. But seriously, I’m not a shopper. I don’t need anything. And I don’t like to drive in LA. It scares me. The people are crazy. The freeways are crazy. And they have so many roads. Like, in Colorado, you got two choices for freeways. The one going east and west and the one going north and south. Sure, there’s a few smaller ones, but basically, you’ve got two choices.

LA, you’ve got five ways to get somewhere, and all five ways are clogged with cars going the same way. I’m just not comfortable driving alone yet.

I could call someone. But everyone I know has a job.

I ponder things for a few moments, my eyes sweeping the room. I get up and feed the fish. Now that the tank is clean, I realize there’s a turtle in there. He’s soaking up some UV rays under the sun lamp. That makes me smile for ten seconds.

It’s hot out today, so the wall of windows is closed and I have the air-conditioning on. I could go swimming. But that’s about all I’ve done for the past few months.

I plop back down on the couch and grab the tablet from the coffee table. I could go on Twitter. Jesus, I haven’t been on Twitter since the kidnapping. I haven’t even thought about Twitter. My account was deleted, but the police made them put it back up so they could monitor it. I just never bothered to delete it again.

I navigate to the web and type in my profile link and then log in.

I have so many messages, it says 99+ in the message tab. Same thing for the notifications. I check the messages first, because those are probably all from the Filthy Blue Birds. I scroll all the way down my list and start reading chronologically. Mostly it’s a bunch of messages asking if I’m OK. Those are all timestamped the morning they found out I was missing. Then they get weird. Like some of them thought I was dead and were saying their goodbyes.

Creepy.

I click out of messages and go to notifications, and glance at the first one on top. A blue link appears above that notification, indicating that I have five new ones. What the hell? People are talking to me right now?

The first one makes little sense to me. It’s part of a conversation tagged with my @FilthyBlueBird handle. All it says is—You’re so right. It’s from someone I have never heard of.

I click the conversation link to see what they are talking about.

Editor @Realreporter00 - 15 min

@GrapevineHW You’re wrong. Asher is about done with his @FilthyBlueBird.