Chapter 5: The Other Name
The table went very quiet.
Vanessa picked up her wine.
"A colleague."
"A colleague named Marcus who texts you during dinner."
"People text during dinner, Daniel.
It's not a crime."
"You flipped the phone over."
"I didn't want it to interrupt us."
"You flipped it before you read it."
She set the wine down.
"I glanced at the name and put it away.
That's called being present."
I kept my eyes on my tea.
Daniel leaned back in his chair.
He wasn't raising his voice.
He never raised his voice — I had raised him that way, though right now I wasn't sure whether to be proud of that or not.
A raised voice would have been easier to dismiss.
What he was doing instead was harder to escape: he was simply looking at her and waiting.
"Marcus is a colleague," she said again.
"We're working on a project together."
"What kind of project?"
"A property listing.
I'm in real estate, Daniel, you know this."
"I know you're in real estate."
"Then why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because," he said, "you also had a text from someone named Daniel at 4:47 this afternoon.
I saw it on your lock screen at the laundromat."
She blinked.
"The preview was visible," he said.
"Still on for tonight.
I've been thinking about you all week." He paused.
"I didn't send that."
The color that had left Vanessa's face in the laundromat came back now — too much of it, too fast.
"That was — that's a different contact.
I have two clients named Daniel."
"You have a client who texts you that he's been thinking about you all week."
"It's a manner of speaking.
Some clients are—"
"Vanessa."
She stopped.
"I've been patient," he said.
"I've given you room to explain.
I'm asking you directly now, and I'd like a direct answer." He folded his hands on the table.
"Is there someone else?"
The restaurant continued around us.
A couple laughed two tables over.
A waiter refilled someone's water.
The candle between us burned without flickering.
Vanessa looked at me.
I don't know what she was looking for.
Permission, maybe.
Or some kind of signal about how much I'd told him.
Or perhaps she simply needed somewhere to look that wasn't Daniel's face.
I gave her nothing.
"No," she said.
"There is no one else."
Daniel nodded slowly.
He picked up his water glass, took a sip, and set it down.
"All right," he said.
And something in the way he said it — flat, final, like a door closing on a room he'd already decided to leave — told me he didn't believe her.
It told her the same thing.
She reached across the table and put her hand over his.
"Daniel.
I want this to work.
I've wanted it to work since the first night we met.
You know that."
He looked at her hand on his.
"I know what I thought I knew," he said.
She pulled her hand back.
We finished dinner without speaking much.
The bread was cleared.
The candles burned lower.
Vanessa checked her phone twice more under the table, angling the screen away from both of us.
Daniel watched her do it both times and said nothing.
When the bill came, he paid it.
In the car, she asked him to drop her at her apartment.
He did.
She said goodnight.
He said goodnight.
She looked at me once, in the passenger mirror, before she got out.
I didn't look away.
After her door closed, Daniel sat for a moment without starting the engine.
"Mom," he said.
"Yes."
"What did you see on that phone?
At the laundromat."
I had been waiting for this question since the moment he'd walked through the door.
"The same thing you saw," I said.
"The name.
The preview."
"But you saw it before I did."
"Yes."
"And you didn't say anything at dinner."
"It wasn't my dinner to ruin."
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then he started the car.
"She's lying," he said.
Not a question.
"I think," I said carefully, "that you already know that."
He pulled out into the street.
His hands were steady on the wheel.
His jaw was set.
We drove the rest of the way to my house in silence, but it was not an empty silence.
It was the kind that comes after something has been decided, even if no one has said it out loud yet.
When he walked me to my door, he hugged me longer than usual.
"I'll call you tomorrow," he said.
"I'll be here."
I watched his car until the tail lights disappeared around the corner.
Then I went inside, put my damp laundry in my own washing machine, and sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea I didn't drink.
My phone buzzed an hour later.
A number I didn't recognize.
The message read: *We need to talk.
May you like
Please don't say anything to Daniel yet.
— Vanessa*
