Chapter 3: The Address I Was Never Supposed To Find
I wrote the address on the back of a receipt I found in my coat pocket.
My handwriting came out shaky, the numbers crowding together.
Captain Reyes said my name twice.
I didn't stop walking.
I got back in my car.
The balloons pressed against the rear window.
The cake sat on the passenger seat, the little plastic Happy Birthday pick still standing straight up in the frosting.
I typed the address into my phone.
Twelve minutes away.
I drove the whole way without the radio.
Just the sound of the road and the balloons shifting every time I turned.
The address took me to a neighborhood I recognized but had no reason to know well — newer construction, the kind of street where every house looks almost identical except for the color of the front door.
I slowed at the number and pulled over two houses down.
Tyler's truck was in the driveway.
I sat there for a long moment.
Then I got out.
I didn't bring the cake.
I left the balloons in the car.
The front door was a deep green.
I rang the bell and stood back.
A woman answered.
Mid-thirties, dark hair pulled up, wearing a cardigan like she'd been home all morning.
She looked at me the way people look at someone they already know something about.
"Can I help you?" she said.
"I'm Amanda," I said.
"Tyler's wife."
Something moved across her face.
Not surprise.
Something closer to relief, and that was worse.
"You should come in," she said.
"I'd rather know who you are first."
She held the door frame.
"My name is Diane.
Tyler and I — we've been friends for a long time."
"Friends," I said.
"It's not what you're thinking."
"You don't know what I'm thinking."
She looked past me toward the street, then back.
"He's here.
He's okay.
But there's something he needs to tell you himself, and I think — I think today was the day he finally decided to."
My chest tightened.
"Then why didn't he tell me at home?
Why here?"
She didn't answer that.
I walked past her into the house.
The living room was small and neat.
A child's drawing was taped to the wall near the hallway — a house, a sun, three stick figures.
I counted them without meaning to.
Tyler was sitting at the kitchen table.
He stood up the moment he saw me, and the look on his face was one I had never seen before.
Not guilt exactly.
Something older than guilt.
Something that had been sitting inside him for a long time.
"Amanda," he said.
"Don't," I said.
"Don't say my name like that yet.
Just tell me what's happening."
He pulled out a chair.
"Please sit down."
"Tyler."
"Please."
I sat.
He sat across from me.
Diane stayed in the doorway to the kitchen, and I noticed she didn't leave the room, which told me she already knew everything he was about to say.
"How long have you known her?" I asked.
"Seven years."
The number hit me like a door swinging open into cold air.
"Seven years," I repeated.
"It's not — Amanda, it's not a relationship.
It was never that.
But there's something else." He looked at the table.
Then back at me.
"Diane has a son.
He's six years old."
I heard the words.
I understood each one individually.
May you like
"His name is Noah," Tyler said.
"And he's mine."
