Chapter 4: Vanessa Picks Up on the Second Ring
I waited until after midnight.
I don't know why — maybe I needed the apartment to feel completely quiet first, or maybe I needed to be sure Myles wasn't coming back.
I sat at the kitchen table with a glass of water I hadn't touched and dialed the number.
She picked up on the second ring.
"I was hoping you'd call tonight." Her voice was calm.
Careful.
Like someone who had rehearsed being calm for a long time.
"Vanessa?"
"Yes."
"My name is —"
"I know your name," she said.
"I've known about you for almost two years."
That stopped me.
"He told you about me?"
"No.
I found you myself." A pause.
"After I left, I needed to know if he'd moved on.
I needed to know if there was someone else I should warn." Another pause, longer.
"But I wasn't brave enough.
I kept telling myself it wasn't my business anymore."
"What changed?"
"The billboard," she said.
"Someone sent me a photo of it.
When I saw the ring in the news coverage — the shape of it, the setting — I recognized it immediately." Her voice tightened almost imperceptibly.
"It's the same ring he gave me."
The water glass was right in front of me.
I didn't pick it up.
"The exact same ring?"
"I'd know it anywhere.
I wore it for fourteen months." She exhaled.
"When I saw it on your hand, I couldn't stay quiet anymore.
I called Derek.
I asked him to find you before you said yes."
"I already said yes," I told her.
"At the restaurant.
Before I saw the billboard the next morning."
Silence.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I'm so sorry.
I should have been braver sooner."
"Tell me what you found out.
Tell me everything."
She was quiet for a moment.
When she spoke again, the careful calm had shifted into something more tired.
Like she'd been carrying this for a long time and had finally set it down.
"About four months before our wedding, I started finding things that didn't add up.
Small things at first.
A second phone he said belonged to a colleague.
Receipts for hotels in cities he'd never mentioned traveling to.
A name in his email — just a first name, but it appeared over and over."
"What name?"
"Claire."
I said nothing.
"I didn't confront him right away.
I told myself I was being paranoid.
We were happy — or I thought we were.
So I waited.
I watched." She paused.
"Then one afternoon I came home early and found a folder on his desk.
He'd left it out by accident.
Inside were documents.
Financial documents."
"What kind?"
"Accounts I didn't know existed.
Transfers.
A property in another state registered under a company name I'd never heard." Her voice was steady but thin.
"And a second lease agreement.
An apartment.
Signed eighteen months before that.
While we were together."
My hand tightened around the phone.
"He was living two lives," I said.
"He was funding two lives," she corrected.
"With money that — some of it was mine.
I'd transferred savings into a joint account eight months before.
For the wedding.
For our future." A beat.
"It was gone.
Most of it."
"Did you go to the police?"
"I tried." The tiredness in her voice deepened.
"He found out I'd been to see a lawyer.
That same night he sat me down and told me very quietly that if I pursued it, he had documents that would make it look like I had authorized every transfer.
That I had signed things." She stopped.
"I hadn't signed anything.
But he showed me papers with my signature on them."
The kitchen felt very cold.
"He forged your signature."
"I couldn't prove they were forged.
Not quickly.
Not without money to fight it.
And I was scared." Her voice didn't waver, but something underneath it did.
"So I left.
I left everything and I ran.
And I have hated myself for it every single day since."
I looked at the ring on my finger.
"Vanessa.
The joint account I have with Myles —"
"Check it," she said immediately.
"Check it tonight.
May you like
Check every account you share with him."
I was already moving toward my laptop.
