Page 4 of Insincerity

Three quick knocks pulled my attention out of the past and back to the snowy present. I turned around, grateful for the interruption to my gloomy thoughts. Uncle Logan stood in the doorway, his hair still damp from the shower.

“Did I wake you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I was just relaxing.”

He stepped closer, bringing with him the fresh scent of cedar and mint. “I’m about to run into town to pick up a few groceries. Any requests for dinner tonight?”

I thought about it for a moment. “How about pasta?”

“Fettuccine Alfredo?” he said with a knowing smile. It was my favorite dish.

“Yes, please. With garlic bread.”

“I think we can make that happen,” he teased. “Anything else you’d like me to grab? Dessert?”

“Maybe some fruit to cut through all the bread and cream.”

“Anything for my girl.” He winked.

When I first moved in with him, I was still so self-conscious about my weight because of what had happened at my old school that I imposed a strict no-sugar, no-fat diet on myself. I requested nothing but salads and chicken breast for lunch and dinner. Uncle Logan put a stop to that quickly, making it clear that I didn’t need to change a single thing about myself. Plus, he loved to cook, and it seemed a shame to let his talents go to waste.

Learning how to appreciate my body didn’t happen overnight, but with time, I grew more comfortable in my skin. I wasn’t immune to second-guessing my choice to go back for a second helping of dinner, or blaming myself instead of the designer when a piece of clothing didn’t fit. Still, I was determined to keep working at accepting myself.

“I’m just going to finish something up in my office and then head out,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”

I was sure that was true. Despite our private natural setting, we weren’t actually that remote. It was only a short drive down the private road to civilization.

He leaned down to kiss my forehead, and the brush of his lips against my skin made my stomach flutter. I held my breath until he left the room, and then sighed heavily. Why was my body reacting this way to simple gestures of affection? Logan was a father figure to me, a best friend, a source of support. My pulse shouldn’t race every time my uncle touched me. It was wrong.

Needing a change of scenery, I went upstairs to my bedroom, planning to text some friends from school. But as I grabbed my phone off the wireless charging dock on my nightstand, I noticed I had an email notification. The email was from my school’s registrar’s office. I frowned as I read the message. One of the classes I’d signed up for next semester had been cancelled due to insufficient enrollment. I would have to choose a different course if I wanted to maintain my status as a full-time student.

I grabbed my laptop from the desk and brought it over to the bed, figuring I might as well take care of the problem right away. I typed in the address for my school’s website and waited for it to load. After a few minutes of churning, the page displayed a connection error. The wi-fi was acting up, just like Uncle Logan said it probably would. I considered leaving the task for another day, but I was worried about the required classes for my major filling up. Cell service in the area was spotty at best without the internet, so I couldn’t use my phone as a hotspot. There was probably free wi-fi at the library in town.

Then I remembered that Uncle Logan’s office computer was hard-wired to the internet. Surely, he wouldn’t mind me using it for something school related.

I padded to his office on the other side of the house in my socks. He’d arranged his desk so that he could look out the window while he worked. I slid into his chair, relieved to find his computer on and still logged in. As I minimized the spreadsheet he’d left open, I saw that the desktop background was an old photo of me, Uncle Logan, and my dad.

My chest ached as I studied the faces on the screen. Uncle Logan had come to visit us in Eureka over Christmas, just a few months before my dad was sent away. I remembered all the shops and restaurants decorated with white lights and wreaths. We went out for dinner at the Oberon Grill in Old Town, and my dad asked the server if she could take our picture. The three of us squeezed together on one side of the booth with me in the middle and all of us wearing broad grins.

We were happy then.

The desire to be nestled between the two most important men in my life made my throat clench. But it wasn’t going to happen; my dad had made sure of that. I forced myself to click the browser app, covering up the family photo. My uncle already had over a dozen saved tabs open. I opened a new one and successfully logged into the school’s website. The course database was laggy and confusing, so I opted to download the course catalog instead. Unlike my laptop, the option to go directly to the Downloads folder didn’t pop up, so I had to go hunting for it.

Opening the file explorer, I scanned the list of recently used files and folders, my gaze catching on a folder labeled “Palo Alto Footage.” My uncle often took pictures and videos of the important moments throughout our lives. I recalled him making one last recording of the empty apartment in Palo Alto right before we moved here. A wave of nostalgia pushed me to click on the folder.

I expected to see files labeled after holidays and vacations. Instead, I found more folders organized by month. I clicked on “March” and was surprised to see what looked like hundreds of files with names like “Living room” and “Kitchen” followed by the date. I clicked on one randomly and gasped when an image of me slicing a bell pepper at the kitchen island appeared on the screen.

That was…weird. I knew that Uncle Logan had security cameras pointed at the entrances, but this camera was angled to record the interior from somewhere slightly above eye level. I closed the video player and opened another file, and then another, and another. Before I knew it, I’d watched snippets of over a dozen videos, all taken from various places in the apartment. I was in every single one of them, doing random, mundane things.

Backtracking through previous folders, I realized these recent videos were just the tip of the iceberg. The recordings appeared to go back years, as if he’d been secretly filming me ever since I moved in with him.

“Why would you have these?” I whispered, incredulous. My hand trembled around the mouse.

Closing out of a video of me reading on the couch, I clicked into a subfolder labeled with what appeared to be a bunch of random letters and opened the first file.

My breath caught in my chest.

“What the actual fuck?”

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