Chapter 2 - Two Cars Back
I followed him, hanging two cars behind whenever the traffic let me.
At the first light I nearly lost him. My heart slammed until I picked his bumper out of the pack again.
I kept waiting for him to swing toward the shopping plaza. He never got near a store. He drove straight to Millbrook Park.
I parked at the far end of the lot, nose-out, where he wouldn't clock my car. Then I watched.
Kevin got the kids out. He had a blanket tucked under one arm and a little cooler in the other hand.
This wasn't spur of the moment. He'd packed for it.
He spread the blanket under a big oak while Emma and Noah took off for the playground.
For about twenty minutes, nothing happened. Part of me started building him an alibi. Maybe Megan had misread the whole thing. Maybe he really did just bring the kids here and chat with people. Maybe there was a version of this that didn't end my marriage.
Then a woman came down the path with a little terrier on a leash.
Kevin smiled at her. She smiled back. He said something and she slowed, then stopped. A minute later she was sitting on the corner of his blanket.
I couldn't hear a word from where I sat, but I knew his faces. The worried little frown. The humble shrug. The way he'd drop his eyes to the ground when he wanted to look wounded.
Before long he was leaning into the conversation, telling this total stranger — I'd have bet the house on it — the exact same sob story.
She looked over at our kids. Kevin followed her gaze and gave a sad smile.
I gripped the wheel so hard my knuckles ached. My hands were shaking so badly I had to press them flat against my thighs.
The woman put her hand on his arm.
Kevin didn't pull away.
That was the moment the last excuse I'd been holding for him fell apart.
I sat there almost an hour. He wasn't just flirting. He was performing. And our children were part of the act. Every so often he'd nod toward the playground and the woman's face would go soft and sympathetic.
At one point Noah came running over. Kevin pulled him in close and said something that made the woman laugh. Noah laughed too, not knowing he'd just been used as a prop for a life that didn't exist.
My chest physically hurt.
Finally the woman stood. Kevin took out his phone. So did she. They tapped at their screens. Then she waved and walked off, and he watched her go.
I wanted to fling my door open and march across that grass and make him explain himself in front of everyone.
I didn't. If I cornered him alone, he'd run the conversation. He'd tell me Megan misheard. He'd tell me I misread what I just watched with my own eyes. He'd delete whatever he didn't want me to find.
He'd built this lie out in the open. I wasn't going to let him drag it back into the house and turn it into one more private story he could bend however he wanted.
I drove home before he did.
When Kevin walked in, he was carrying a grocery bag. Milk, cereal, bananas. His cover.
"Productive errand run?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said, easy as anything. "Kids wanted to hit the park for a bit."
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Emma looked at him for a second. Then she looked at me.
That one small glance told me there was more.
