The camera blinked alive.
There were eighty-three files.
I sat down.
Elise stood behind me with both hands resting on the chair back. Jonah took the other chair, elbows on his knees. Wade remained near the entrance.
The first few recordings were months old.
Randall in the rental house.
Randall thinner than I remembered him.
Randall looking directly into the lens and then away.
He had dated each file.
Some were seconds long.
In one, he said, “This is stupid,” and turned the camera off.
In another: “Meryl, I had a whole speech. Apparently cancer ate that too.”
Elise made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
We kept going.
Randall talked about practical things at first. Insurance. Accounts. The house. He listed passwords and then swore because he remembered passwords could change. He complained that Wade had bought the wrong brand of ginger ale. From behind the camera in one recording, Wade said, “It’s ginger ale, not single-malt Scotch.”
