Chapter 4 - How Easily He Lied
"I'm fine," I said. "Just tired."
"You sure? You skipped breakfast."
"Wasn't hungry."
A short pause. "Okay. I've got a call at eleven, but I can ring you after if you want to talk."
"No, don't worry about it."
"Alright." Another pause. "Love you."
"You too."
I hung up and set the phone on the bed.
He hadn't sounded nervous. Not careful. Just Ethan — relaxed and warm and completely believable.
That was the part that scared me. Not the bag. Not the key card. How easy it was for him. Calling to check on me. Saying love you. Like none of it existed.
I sat on the edge of the bed a moment. Then I got up, went back to the closet, and reached behind the folded shirts.
My hand hit something hard-edged.
I pulled it out.
A phone. A second phone. Cheap. No case. The kind you buy with a prepaid SIM and cash.
I pressed the power button. It came on. No passcode.
The messages opened right up.
The top thread was labeled with a single letter. K.
I opened it.
The last message went out at 6:44 that morning. Seventeen minutes after he backed down the driveway.
Leaving now. Miss you already.
Her reply, three minutes later: Can't wait for Thursday. Same room?
His answer: Same room. I'll book it.
I read it three times.
Then I scrolled up. The thread didn't go back weeks. It went back months. Page after page of the most ordinary conversation imaginable — the comfortable, lazy back-and-forth of two people who've stopped being careful because they're sure nobody's watching.
There were photos. I stopped after the first one.
I set the phone on the bed next to mine and went to the window. A neighbor was walking her dog. Two kids rode bikes down the sidewalk. Everything out there looked exactly like it had yesterday.
I stood until my breathing slowed.
Then I picked up the burner and photographed every message in the thread with my own phone. The photos. The contact info. The first message — dated nine months back — and the last one from that morning.
When I finished, I powered it off and slid it back behind the shirts, same edge facing out.
I went downstairs. Sophie was at the table now, dressed, eating cereal, watching something on her tablet.
"Mommy, can Lily come here next time?"
"Maybe," I said. "We'll see."
I poured a fresh cup of coffee and stood at the counter. My hands were steady. I'd expected them to shake.
I couldn't confront him yet. Not until I knew what outcome I wanted. Not until I'd decided, clear-headed, what I could live with and what I couldn't.
I'd watched women walk into that conversation unprepared and walk out with nothing — talked in circles, handed apologies made of air, convinced to "give it time."
Not me.
First I needed to know who Kristen actually was. Not the two-year-old version Ethan handed me. The real one. Where she lived. Where she worked. Whether she knew about Sophie.
I typed her name into the search bar with Ethan's company.
Three results. LinkedIn. A directory page. A headshot.
I opened the profile. She was younger than me — five, six years, not a shocking gap. Dark hair. A direct smile. A job title in Ethan's department.
Then I noticed something. Her location hadn't been updated in a while. It still said Denver.
But the key card was from here. Twenty-five minutes from my kitchen.
She wasn't flying in from Denver for these Thursdays.
She'd moved.
I set the phone on the counter, careful and slow, and looked across the room at my daughter eating cereal.
Nine months of messages. A burner with no lock. A woman who'd relocated to our city and never once come up in conversation.
May you like
Ethan hadn't just been careless.
He'd been planning.
