Page 82 of The Dysfunctional Family's Guide to Murder
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Dylan. My phone is my fifth limb. This isn’t mine.”
“So, whose is it?”
“I dunno. It looks familiar, though.” I turn the dead cell phone over in my hands. “It could be GG’s, because Dad gave her one of his old ones. I think I recognize the chip on the screen.”
“What does that mean?” Dylan asks.
“I don’t know.”
We abandon the box for the kitchen and plug the phone into the charger.
“I’m so dusty,” I say, holding up my hands, and Dylan, oh so casually, like it’s not even a thing, takes one of them and turns it over in his.
“Filthy,” he says, dusting my hand with his own. It tickles but I don’t laugh. When it’s clean(ish) he doesn’t let go but laces his fingers through mine. I could write another whole chapter about the hand-holding, but I am aware you’ve come here to see a mystery solved (and we’re so close), so I’ll try to be restrained. Just take my word for it that it’s…something.
“Ruth,” he says. “This is probably not the time, but there’s something I wanted to tell you.”
Then the phone beeps and we step apart, Dylan banging against the microwave so hard it skids across the kitchen bench.
“Crap,” he says, grabbing his elbow. “Hold up,” he says a moment later as he pushes the microwave back into place. “There’s something here.” Then he’s holding another phone that’s a few generations younger than GG’s. “Here’syourmissing phone. It fell down behind the microwave when it was charging, I think.” He hands it to me.
“That’s not my phone either,” I say, although I have to double-check because not only is it the same model, but the lock screen has a photo of what I’m pretty sure is Yallingup Beach—the same as mine. When Dad took me there not even a week ago, the water was too cold to swim in, but it was chock-full of surfers. The combination of that beach shot and the fact that the phone’s screen is crammed with missed calls and messages makes me sure I know who it belongs to.
“Seriously? How many lost phones can one house reasonably contain, do you think?”
“Seriously.”
“Well, whose is it?”
For now I don’t tell him. Instead I pick up GG’s phone, which is now asking for a passcode.
“What’s her passcode?” Dylan asks.
“I don’t know. Do you know?”
“How wouldIknow? What year was she born?”
“I’m going to try 1234,” I say, stabbing it in.
“How old do you think she was?”
“GG wouldn’t have bothered putting on a proper security code—she would have left it with the default one or something she could remember.” I say this more confidently than I feel. It doesn’t work. “Nope.”
“9876?”
“Nope. I’m going to try four zeros. That’s what my mum has on hers; she says it’s the only one she can remember.”
I think we’re each as surprised as the other when it works.
“Now I’m impressed,” Dylan says.
“You weren’t impressed when I discovered the phone?”
“Can we call itdiscoveredif it was just sitting in a box?”
“What happened to ‘oh, Ruth, you’re a genius’?”
