But I didn’t know there was much more going on beneath the surface.
***
Five years later, Terry and I sat across from each other at our dining table.
We had takeout from the same diner where we had our first date.
We’d married 12 months earlier in a small ceremony that my parents attended with tight smiles.
That day we were celebrating our first wedding anniversary.
I brought out dessert; I’d ordered the peach cobbler because it was tradition.
Terry reached into his jacket, and I thought he was going to hand me a gift.
Instead, he set something in my palm.
When I opened my hand, there was a small black USB drive.
My husband’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
“Chloe, I can’t carry this anymore,” Terry whispered. “You deserve the truth.”
I stared at it, then frowned at him.
“What truth? Terry, you’re scaring me.”
He met my eyes, and for the first time in five years, I saw something there that I didn’t understand.
“Everything you’ve believed about the night before prom and the day of it is a lie. Watch what’s on that drive, and you’ll finally understand why I disappeared for a while before prom. After you see it, you’ll never look at your parents the same way again.”
***
My laptop took forever to boot up. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.
The video was dashcam footage from Terry’s car the night before prom.
I recognized the road immediately: the quiet two-lane stretch that curved out toward the next town.
Terry was humming along to the radio.
Then a dark sedan appeared behind him, too close, riding his bumper.
I felt every hair on my body stand on end.
Then the sedan slowed and kept its distance.
The clip cut.
“Play the second video,” Terry said.
I clicked on it and saw the same sedan behind Terry.
The car swerved into the opposite lane and pulled up alongside him.
Then it cut sharply in front, forcing Terry’s car off the shoulder and down into the ditch.
My eyes were wide as I continued watching.
The dashcam kept rolling, tilted sideways. I saw the sedan pull over. I saw the license plate.
I knew that license plate.
One figure climbed out. My father, moving stiffly!
I saw him take out his phone and dial someone.
“He’s not moving, he’s not moving!” my father said, panicking on the call. “I know I said I’d only scare him, but he was on his way back to meet her at the prom!”
“The stupid boy swerved harder than I thought, Sylvia!” my father shouted.
I couldn’t breathe.
Terry had clipped his phone to the dash with a voice memo app running that morning. He liked recording himself singing on drives. It kept running after the crash, close enough to catch every word my father said while standing over the ditch.
“He wouldn’t take the money, Sylvia. He wouldn’t take it, and now look…”
“I’ll call an ambulance. Wait. Just… wait a minute. Let me think,” my father said on the call.
Terry stopped the recording, watching my face.
“You finally saw it for yourself,” he said.
I couldn’t answer. My throat wouldn’t work.
He wheeled closer and took my hand.
“Your parents came to me three weeks before prom, Chloe. At the diner where I worked weekends. Your dad slid an envelope across the table.”
“How much?” I whispered.
“Twenty thousand. They said you were headed for an Ivy League school, that I was ‘small-town baggage.’ They said I’d hold you back forever.”
“Of course. So they followed me the day I picked up my suit. Your dad told me later at the hospital that it was supposed to be a scare. Just enough to shake me up.”
I felt my body go cold.
