The app was an older third-party one, the kind Holly had stopped using when she switched phones, but it was still logged in. It had been frozen since the last time she'd used this device and now that it had a connection again, it updated itself. Pulled in about 8 months of old threads. I scrolled without really thinking about what I was looking for, and then I found the thread with Amber and stopped. It took me a few minutes to understand what I was reading.
Not because it was written in code or anything clever. It was actually pretty straightforward once you knew what you were looking at. But it took a minute to accept what it was. They had a system. They had worked it out together, the two of them, and it was specific.
There was a shared folder somewhere. The messages referenced it by a nickname that contained spa photos. Stock images, looked like, or maybe photos from an actual trip years ago. Neither Nathan nor Rick would know the difference. The system was Amber sent a photo to Holly, Holly sent it to me.
Holly sent one to Amber, Amber sent it to Rick. Staggered timing so neither husband got the same image at the same moment and thought to compare notes. Each photo had a caption ready to go. Loving this facial. The massage therapist here is incredible.
About to do the hot stone thing. Wish me luck. There were at least 15 or 20 photos in the rotation. Maybe more. I scrolled back far enough to find the beginning of the system.
One message from Amber that said, "Okay, here's what I think we do." And then a long explanation. Holly's response was two words, "You're a genius." I sat on my work bench stool for a while. Then I did something I hadn't planned on doing. I screenshot everything. Every message in that thread that mattered.
Sent them to myself, deleted the sent message, connected the iPad back to the charger, and went inside. Holly was in the living room watching something. I made coffee. She asked how the iPad was doing, and I told her the battery was dead, and that I'd have it ready by tomorrow. She thanked me, and I said, "Yep." I didn't sleep much that night.
Not because I was devastated exactly, or not only that. My brain was trying to be practical before it was anything else. It was calculating. She had a spa weekend coming up, 3 weeks out. I thought about the thread.
They'd mentioned a location once in an earlier message. Amber had written something like, "Same place, uncle's cabin. He never uses it before Memorial Day." I hadn't known what uncle or what cabin, but I knew Amber and I knew her maiden name and I knew enough about how to look things up. It took me about 40 minutes online to find a property registered to a man with Amber's family name about 2 hours north on a lake. I went out to the access road the following Saturday to look at it.