Chapter 5: What Dana Knew
I stared at the message for a long time.
Then I typed back: *How did you get this number?*
Her reply came fast.
*Max's phone.
I still have access to his contacts.
I know that's strange.
I'm sorry.
But please — I need to tell you something.*
I sat with that for a moment.
She had access to his contacts.
Which meant at some point he had handed her his phone, or left it unlocked, or simply never thought to check what she could reach.
*What do you want to tell me?* I wrote.
*Not over text.
Can we meet tomorrow?*
Every sensible part of me said no.
She was his affair partner.
She had humiliated me in a café without knowing it, and now she was texting me from the dark of whatever her own night looked like.
But she had said: *There are things about Max you don't know.*
And I had spent the last three hours learning that the list of things I didn't know was longer than I'd thought.
*Tomorrow.
10am.
The café on Oak Street,* I typed.
*I'll be there.*
I put the phone down and didn't sleep much.
In the morning I got Lily ready for school.
Max came downstairs in yesterday's clothes.
He'd slept on the couch — I could tell by the crease on his cheek and the way he moved, careful and quiet, like someone trying not to take up too much space.
"I'll take her," he said.
"I've got it."
"Let me do something."
I looked at him.
Lily was in the hallway pulling on her shoes, humming to herself, perfectly ordinary.
"Fine," I said.
He took Lily to school.
I made coffee and sat at the kitchen table and looked at the chair where he'd sat the night before.
He came back twenty minutes later.
"She asked me if you were sad," he said.
"What did you tell her?"
"That you had a hard day yesterday and you were tired."
"That's true enough."
He sat down.
"Who are you meeting at ten?"
I looked up.
"How do you know I'm meeting anyone?"
"You're dressed.
You have your keys on the table."
"Dana texted me last night."
The color left his face.
"What?"
"She said there are things about you I don't know.
I'm going to find out what they are."
He stood up so fast the chair scraped.
"You can't — she doesn't know what she's talking about."
"Then you have nothing to worry about."
"She's trying to cause problems.
She's upset, she's not thinking straight—"
"Max." I picked up my keys.
"If there's something I need to know, I'd rather hear it now than in six months.
If there isn't, then this conversation is over in an hour and we move on."
"What she might tell you — it's going to sound worse than it is."
I stopped.
"What is she going to tell me?"
He pressed his mouth shut.
"Max.
What is she going to tell me?"
"It's about the business account," he said finally.
"The Henderson account.
There were some decisions I made that she was involved in.
Financially."
"What kind of decisions?"
"I was going to tell you."
"What kind of decisions?"
He sat back down.
Put his head in his hands.
"I moved some money," he said.
"To keep the account running.
It wasn't — it was supposed to be temporary."
The kitchen felt very still.
"Whose money?" I asked.
He didn't answer.
"Max.
Whose money did you move?"
May you like
He looked up at me.
"Ours," he said.
