Delete After Watching

I spend the rest of the launch pretending my blood pressure is a normal human thing. I hug donors, thank county chairs, kiss Poppy's temple, and watch Owen move through the crowd with that weightless authority that used to feel like safety. Every time he glances at me, I wonder whether he knows the video has landed, whether Tessa's name is already moving through some private channel under his skin.

By the time the last reporter leaves, my cheeks hurt from smiling. I tell Owen I need the restroom and cut through the back corridor instead, locking myself in the campaign office's supply room between stacked signs and cases of bottled water. I replay the file twice, then run the metadata through the tracing tool I keep for opposition dumps and anonymous leaks.

The upload path looks wrong almost immediately. The file bounced through three throwaway servers, but the final relay pings a dormant Harbor House donor microsite we used years ago for a girls' scholarship gala. I know that site because I wrote the apology statement when a local blogger accused the charity of burying a resident-abuse complaint. Vivian Hart called it a smear. I turned her denial into clean copy, and the story died in forty-eight hours.

Tessa's face is still on my screen when someone knocks. "Sloane?" Poppy's voice, thin with bedtime and sugar. "Dad said you were in here."

I slam the screen dark and open the door too fast. Poppy tilts her head at me, eleven years old and too perceptive to be the child any politician wants in a hallway when adults are lying. Her braid is half out, and she is still wearing the campaign sticker she put on her dress like a medal.

"You forgot your wrap," she says. Then she squints at my face. "Did you cry?"

"Mascara emergency."

She does not buy it, but she lets me take the little cashmere wrap from her hands. "Grandma Vivian says we should go straight home because reporters are circling."

The fact that Vivian is still managing exits at ten-thirty at night does not surprise me. What surprises me is the second buzz on my phone. No caller, no number, only a text: Delete after watching if you still trust him. Save it if you finally don't.

Poppy glances toward the lit screen before I angle it away. "Who is that?" she asks.

I force a laugh that comes out dry. "Work."

But the message is not work. It is a choice delivered like a blade. I look past Poppy down the corridor and see Owen at the far end, one arm around a county commissioner, the other hand already lifting toward me in that easy married gesture that says come here, we're a unit, look the part. I save the file to three different hidden folders before I slide the phone back into my purse and walk out smiling beside my husband.