At nine on Friday, Diane called while I was in the parking lot outside a supply warehouse. The petition had been filed, and her office had received confirmation that it was on the court's docket. She reminded me that official service would still have to be handled properly and that I should avoid arguments about the filing before Celeste was formally notified. I thanked her and sat with the phone in my hand for a long minute. There was no triumph in the fact that I'd kept my word.
I thought about texting Celeste then. I wanted to say that I'd filed, that there was still time to talk about the practical arrangements, and that I didn't want either of us blindsided by bills or paperwork. But I had already decided we should speak when she returned, and Diane had helped me plan a safe, orderly way for that to happen. I chose not to send a message into the middle of a trip that was already the center of our disagreement. Instead I drove home, stopped for dog food, and spent the afternoon cleaning an apartment that suddenly felt much less like a home than it had the week before.
That night Biscuit climbed onto the couch beside me and fell asleep with his head against my thigh. I watched a documentary I didn't remember afterward, made a cup of coffee too late in the evening, and kept checking the weather in Tulum for reasons I couldn't explain. It was sunny there. Here, a cold rain tapped against the window. I turned the television off around midnight, unaware that the most important piece of evidence was going to arrive not from anything I'd searched for, but from a picture of a pink cake in Ohio.
Saturday began as an ordinary day, which is a cruel thing to remember about a day that changes how you understand the previous year. Biscuit woke me by stepping directly on my stomach, then wagged his tail as if that were a perfectly reasonable method of requesting breakfast. I fed him, took him around the block, and came home to a mug of coffee and a pile of laundry I'd been putting off. I had planned to spend the morning cleaning the work van. Instead I ended up sitting on the couch, scrolling through a feed I usually ignored.
Briana's post appeared between a photograph of a friend's new baby and an advertisement for power tools. She was standing in a backyard beneath strings of pink and white balloons, holding a round cake decorated with tiny shoes. The caption said she'd driven nine hours to Ohio for her sister's baby shower and was glad she'd made it. There was a group photograph attached, and Briana stood beside her sister wearing a sweater and jeans, smiling in the same unmistakable way she smiled in every picture.
I read the caption again. The time stamp showed the photographs had been posted that morning, and several relatives had commented about seeing her the night before. It was possible, I told myself, that Celeste had gone to Mexico alone after Briana's plans changed. People change plans all the time, and a misleading assumption isn't evidence of something worse. But Celeste had said they were traveling together, and I hadn't received a single message telling me that arrangement had changed.