Chapter 5 - What Janet Knew
The Kettle & Crumb was small and warm and smelled like cinnamon rolls.
Janet was already there when I walked in — mid-thirties, tired around the eyes, both hands wrapped around a mug she hadn't touched. She stood up when she saw me.
"Thank you for coming."
"Thank you for reaching out," I said, and sat down across from her.
We looked at each other for a second. Two strangers tied together by the same man's lies.
"I'll start at the beginning," she said. "Stop me whenever."
"Go ahead."
"Melissa met Grant about nine months ago. A work thing — he was there with a coworker. She didn't know he was married. He wasn't wearing a ring."
I looked down at my own hands on the table.
"By the time she found out, she was already in deep. He told her the marriage was basically over. That you two had been living like roommates for years. That he was just waiting for the right moment to go."
"We were not living like roommates," I said.
"I know," Janet said. "I could hear it in the way he talked about you. But Melissa believed what she needed to believe."
"And the money?"
Janet's hands tightened on the mug. "About four months back, Melissa mentioned Grant had asked her to hang onto something for him. A bank statement, she thought, or some account paperwork. She didn't study it. But she said the balance was big. North of sixty thousand."
The number dropped in me like a stone.
"He told her it was money he'd been putting away," Janet went on. "For when he left. For the two of them."
"That's our money," I said. "That's from our joint savings. We've been building that for years — for the girls' college, for the house."
Janet nodded slowly. "I figured it was something like that."
"Does Melissa still have the paper?"
"I think so. She stashed it somewhere in her apartment. She brought it up once and then never again."
I sat back. "Janet. Why are you doing this? She's your sister."
She was quiet a moment. "Because I've watched her cancel trips, turn down a promotion, drop her friends — all for a guy who's been lying to her as hard as he's been lying to you." She looked up. "He told her you were cold. That you'd checked out of the marriage years ago. That the pregnancy was some accident neither of you even cared about."
Something moved through me that I didn't have a word for.
"I planned this pregnancy," I said. "We both did. We tried for eight months."
Janet shut her eyes for a second. "I know. I could tell. When you texted me back inside of ten minutes that first night — I could tell."
She reached into her bag and slid a folded square of paper across the table. "I found this two weeks ago, helping her move a bookcase. It fell out from behind it. I don't think she knows I took it."
I unfolded it.
Grant's handwriting. I knew it on sight — the way his letters leaned a little left, the crossbar he always put on his sevens.
M — account's set up. Routing confirmed. Don't say anything to anyone. This is ours. — G
I folded it back along the same creases and laid it flat between us.
"I need to make a call," I said.
"Of course."
May you like
I stepped outside. The morning air had a bite to it. I dug the slip out of my wallet — the number I'd carried for three days without dialing.
I dialed it. The attorney picked up on the second ring.
