The Toll Pings Exposed Her Lies

I was logging into our shared toll account on Saturday morning to update the expired credit

card we have on file for our transponders. Clara was supposed to be three hours south at her mother’s

house for a long weekend, so I didn't expect to see any recent activity on her

car. But as the dashboard loaded, my heart sank. Her transponder

had been pinged four times in the last twenty-four hours—not heading south,

but moving through every toll booth leading to a beach town three hours north.

I sat there staring at the timestamps on the screen, realizing that every "check-in" text

she’d sent me from her mom’s couch was actually sent from a highway heading the wrong way.