The words looked small and desperate on the black glass, like a child begging for permission to defend her own home.

I tapped the screen, highlighted the whole block of text, and hit delete.

I watched the black letters vanish from the bright screen line by line until nothing was left but a blank white rectangle.

Melissa wouldn’t care about the respiratory valve.

She would only care that Mom wasn’t standing on her back porch helping her set out thirty individual portions of lemon cake on glass plates.

I clicked the side button and the screen went completely dark.