I take the phone. Maybe forty posts going back years. A blurry photo of Dolly. A picture of the oak. A shot of Hank that's mostly Hank's nose. The captions are long and rambling, and the most recent post is three weeks old. But the follower count is respectable — boosted, I realize, by the whole Princess Pigpen circus.
"You've got real followers here," I say. "A lot of them."
"That's all the fuss when you arrived," Gloria says, not unkindly. "People came to gawp and some of them stayed."
"And nobody's doing anything with them." I scroll past another out-of-focus photo of Hank. "Honestly, an account this size should be doing real work for you."
"I'm not very good at it either," Gloria says. "I know you used to post on yours every day, so I was wondering if you had any tips."
"Of course." I smile. "It's not complicated once you know what works. Honestly, the first thing is that nobody looks at photos anymore. It's all Reels now — short videos, vertical, under fifteen seconds. The algorithm pushes those and barely touches anything else. So you'd want to film Dolly eating, or Hank coming for an apple, or the goats on the new playground. Stuff that's already happening — you don't need to stage anything."
Gloria nods, listening.
"Hook in the first second with a caption that makes people stop scrolling. And use trending audio. The donation link goes in the bio, not the caption — nobody reads the caption. And post every day. The algorithm rewards consistency more than it rewards quality, which is depressing but useful."
I hear myself saying all of this and realize I haven't talked like this in a while. The commercial part of my brain — the part that knows how to read an audience, build a brand, turn attention into money — has been switched off since I got here.
"Right," Gloria says. "I'm going to forget most of that."
"I can write it down. Or —" An idea arrives. "Or I could do a take-over?"
She tilts her head. "A take-over?"
"Yeah. It's when someone runs an account for a stretch of time. Influencers do it for brands they work for. I've got three weeks left, I'm here most days, and there's a lot of good content going to waste. The new goat playground alone would do numbers — people lose their minds for goats on equipment. And Hank. Hank could carry the account by himself if I posted him properly."
"And how would that work?" Gloria asks.
"You can add me as an administrator," I say. "You'd stay logged in so you can see everything I post and remove things if you want. I'd just be the one posting for a while."
"Yes, Gloria, do it!" Cassie's grinning widely. "Sloane, please. Will you post about Penny and June? Like, properly? They never get any attention."
Gloria smiles at Cassie's enthusiasm. "Oh, well. As long as I can still scroll. I like to have a little snoop over my morning coffee. The Hendersons' dog is hilarious. Pomeranian, ridiculous little thing." She settles back. "Yes. Take it. God knows I'm not doing it justice."
I glance up and see Maggie's watching our exchange from across the table. She looks amused and a little intrigued.
"And you're sure you don't mind the association?" I ask. "Being tied to me, publicly, after everything?"
Gloria shrugs. "Sloane, we've had more donations since you arrived than in the previous two years." She takes a sip of herwater. "I'm not too proud to say it. If you can turn those eyes into something that keeps these animals fed after you're gone, then by all means, associate away."
After you've gone. I let it pass.
"Then I'll start tomorrow," I say. "Give me three weeks and I'll leave you something that runs itself and teach you everything."
"Thank you." She pats my hand, once. "I have a suspicion you've got a good head on you when you choose to use it."
I laugh. "Was that an insult or a compliment?"
Gloria winks. "A little bit of both."
58
MAGGIE
The motel room's been clean for two days now but Sloane never went back. She hasn't brought it up and neither have I.
It's been five beautiful, passionate nights and five blissful mornings of her in my kitchen making only marginally better coffee and scrolling the sanctuary's Instagram, muttering about engagement rates. Five evenings of her on the porch with a book or her phone, planning posts, asking me which video of Dolly is cuter when they look exactly the same to me. The house has changed shape around her. There are two coffee cups in the sink now, and her face cream's on my bathroom shelf. I came in yesterday and she'd done the dishes, badly, and put them away in all the wrong places. It made me so happy.
I've let it become normal but normal has an end date and I've been bracing myself for the pain to come. It's the only sensible thing to do. You enjoy something with a deadline by keeping the deadline in view, not by forgetting it exists.
