Chapter 5: What Pam Found in Twenty Minutes
I didn't tell Grant what I'd found.
I needed to be sure first.
Not suspicious.
Not reading into things.
Sure.
The next morning, after he left, I called Pam back.
"I found a number," I said.
"Eleven calls.
Six weeks.
Always at lunch."
Pam didn't say anything dramatic.
She just said, "Send it to me."
"What are you going to do with it?"
"I have a friend who does HR investigations.
She's good at finding out who a number belongs to without tipping anyone off.
Give me an hour."
I sent the number.
Then I made myself clean the bathroom.
Not because it needed it.
Because I needed something to do with my hands.
Pam called back in forty minutes.
"The number is registered to a consulting LLC," she said.
"Calloway Advisory."
The room didn't spin.
I had been half-expecting it.
But expecting something and hearing it confirmed are two entirely different things.
"Okay," I said.
"I'm sorry."
"It might still be work-related.
She's a consultant.
He manages a team.
Maybe he hired her."
"Maybe," Pam said.
"But you don't hide work calls."
"He didn't hide them.
They're right there on the bill."
"He didn't hide them from the bill.
Did he tell you he was talking to her?"
I didn't answer.
"That's hiding," Pam said gently.
I sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
"What do I do now?"
"You talk to him."
"And say what?
I went through the phone bill and found a number that belongs to a woman whose name you accidentally said in our kitchen?"
"Yes," Pam said.
"Exactly that."
"He'll say it's work."
"Then ask him to show you the invoices."
I hadn't thought of that.
If Diane was consulting for his company, there would be a paper trail.
Contracts.
Payments.
Something official.
"And if there aren't any?"
Pam was quiet.
"Then you'll know," she said.
I stayed on the edge of the bathtub for a while after we hung up.
The house was very quiet.
The kind of quiet that used to feel comfortable and now felt like it was waiting for something.
I thought about fourteen years.
I thought about the coffee mug with the handle turned toward me.
I thought about all the things I had quietly done and quietly accepted and quietly let go because that was just how things were, that was just how Grant was, that was just marriage.
I thought about the gray block on the calendar.
And then I thought about Saturday.
His mother was still coming.
I was still expected to make pot roast.
And Grant still didn't know that I knew the name of the woman he'd been calling every week for six weeks.
I went downstairs and started a grocery list.
Pot roast needed carrots, potatoes, onions, and a good cut of chuck.
I wrote it all down.
May you like
Because whatever was about to happen, I was going to do it on my own terms and in my own time.
Not his.
