Sure enough, Hilary's call came through almost at once.
"Mila, why won't my card work, or Mom's either?"
"I cut off the supplementary cards."
"Are you out of your mind? You don't know we're overseas? What are you cutting off our cards for?"
"You're spending your wife's money to take another woman on vacation. You think that's appropriate?"
"But I've got my parents and Nadia with me too. Sophie's barely costing us anything. And Sophie's family too. The whole clan's out here together, I can't very well make her pay for us."
"Then you pay for her. I never said you couldn't treat her."
Hilary drew a long breath.
"Mila, you know perfectly well I don't have money."
"No money, then why go to Scandinavia?"
I hung up. He called right back.
I didn't pick up, so he started blasting me with voice messages on the messaging app.
"Mila, I know you're upset we didn't celebrate your birthday. But you have a birthday every year. It's just the whole family going out for a meal, what's the point of that?"
"Sophie hardly ever gets to see the northern lights, and it just so happened Nadia wanted to go too, and Mom and Dad are getting on in years and have never been abroad. So I made up my mind then and there to take them."
"I wanted the whole family to go together, actually, but your job's too demanding. You'd never get that much time off."
"Besides, you can't stand the cold. Scandinavia would freeze you half to death. Not bringing you was me looking out for you."
"All right, Mila, stop being angry. Hurry up and reopen the supplementary cards. The whole family's sitting in the restaurant waiting to pay, and it looks really bad, us not being able to settle the bill like this."
"Fix the cards now, while Mom and Dad still aren't angry. Once they're angry, it'll be too late."
I ignored him and opened Sophie's feed. Sure enough, there was a fresh post.
"It feels so good to be loved, to have someone who supports every whim and sudden idea. The whole family, all together, off we go!"
Attached were five plane tickets.
Another message from Hilary landed.
"Mila Harris, I've said all this and you still haven't reopened the supplementary card access. Are you really going to make this whole family wait on you alone?"
"Can you move a little faster? Mom, Dad, and Nadia are all getting impatient!"
I fired back a single red exclamation mark.
After I blocked Hilary, Nadia immediately sent me a voice message.
"Why did you block my brother? Mom and Dad are already angry now. They don't want to yell at you, so just hurry and reopen the card access for us. Otherwise, once they can't hold their tempers, they'll say something ugly right in front of Sophie, and neither my brother nor I will be able to stop them."
The two old fossils still wanted to scold me, so I sent the whole family a red exclamation mark too.
I didn't block Sophie. And I wasn't afraid of the Pruitts using her account to keep needling me.
Because Sophie would shield me from these people, and she needed me to keep her contact anyway.
Otherwise, who would be watching when she flaunted her happiness online?
Sure enough, before long she posted again.
"The family's cards don't work overseas, so I had to put everything on mine for now. But Hilary says he'll pay me back ten times over for whatever I spend abroad once we're home. Hehe, I've hit the jackpot!"
Attached was a photo of her clinking her coffee cup with Hilary's.
Ten times over. Hilary's pockets were emptier than his face. She was dreaming.
