Chapter 5: The Initial on the Screen
I crossed the room in four steps.
The phone was face-up on Dana's entry table, screen still glowing.
The message preview was visible without unlocking it — just enough text to read before it dimmed.
*Running late.
Is she gone yet?
— K*
Dana and I looked at each other.
"K," she said.
"I don't know a K."
"Neither do I."
Vanessa had come to stand behind us.
She read the message over my shoulder and said nothing for a moment.
Then: "I do."
We both turned.
"Her name is Kayla," Vanessa said.
"She works with Ryan.
He introduced her to me at his office Christmas party as his assistant." She paused.
"She was very young.
Very attentive.
I remember thinking she looked at him a certain way, but he said I was being paranoid."
"How long ago was the Christmas party?" I asked.
"Seven months."
Seven months ago, Ryan and I were still married.
Seven months ago, Vanessa was already in the picture.
And apparently, so was Kayla.
I looked at the phone.
The screen had gone dark again.
"We can't unlock it," Dana said.
"We don't need to." I took out my own phone and photographed the entry table — the phone lying there, the timestamp visible on Dana's microwave in the background, the message preview still faintly readable in the photo if you enlarged it.
"We have what we need."
"Which is what, exactly?" Vanessa asked.
"Evidence that he was communicating with a third party tonight.
While his car was still parked outside.
While he was supposedly giving us space to calm down." I lowered my phone.
"He wasn't leaving.
He was coordinating."
Vanessa sat back down on the arm of the sofa.
She looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour.
"How many?" she said.
"How many were there while you were married?"
I had asked myself that question for two years.
I had found three names I could confirm.
I suspected there were others.
"At least three that I know of," I said.
"You were the one he was most serious about."
She laughed — a short, hollow sound.
"Lucky me."
"I'm not saying it to hurt you."
"I know." She pressed her palms against her knees.
"I know you're not."
Dana set a glass of water on the table beside her without being asked.
Vanessa picked it up and held it without drinking.
"What do we do about the phone?" Dana asked.
"We leave it where it is," I said.
"If he comes back for it, we don't mention the message.
If he doesn't, we document that he left it here and collect it in the morning."
"You think he'll come back?"
"He left it on purpose." I said it as the thought formed, and I knew it was true the moment I said it.
"He wanted to see if we'd touch it.
If we'd do something he could use against us."
Dana looked at the phone.
"That's a very paranoid way to think."
"I was married to him for twelve years."
She nodded slowly.
"Fair enough."
Vanessa set the water glass down.
She reached into her clutch and took out the folded paternity test.
She smoothed it against her knee, looking at it the way you look at something you've been handed that you didn't ask for and can't give back.
"The baby's father," she said quietly.
"It's not Ryan."
Neither Dana nor I spoke.
"I knew," she said.
"I mean — I didn't know know.
But I had a feeling.
There was someone else, briefly, before things with Ryan became serious.
I told myself it wasn't possible.
I told myself the timing was wrong." She folded the paper again.
"I think I just wanted it to be Ryan's because then at least the whole thing would make sense."
"Does the other person know?" I asked.
"No."
"You'll need to tell him."
"I know." She looked up.
"Is that terrible?
That my first feeling when I read that test wasn't grief — it was relief?"
I thought about the night I found the documents on Ryan's desk.
The way my hands had gone steady instead of shaking.
The way something in me had settled, not broken.
"No," I said.
"It's not terrible."
Outside, headlights swept across Dana's front window.
A car was pulling up — not Ryan's, something smaller.
It parked behind where Ryan had been, and a woman got out.
Young.
Dark coat.
Moving quickly toward the front door.
Dana leaned toward the window.
"Is that—"
The doorbell rang.
Vanessa stood up slowly.
May you like
She looked at me.
"That's Kayla," she said.
