Chapter 3: What the Photo Showed
I stared at the photo for a long time before I understood what I was looking at.
It was taken through a restaurant window.
Dim lighting, a corner booth.
Mark was sitting across from Linda.
His hand was on top of hers on the table.
They were both smiling.
The timestamp in the corner read eight weeks ago.
A Tuesday night.
The same Tuesday Mark had told me he was working late on the Henderson account.
I heard his footsteps on the stairs.
I turned the phone face-down on the bed.
The bedroom door opened.
"Hey." Mark leaned against the doorframe, loosening his tie.
"You okay?
You look pale."
"I'm fine."
"Emma still upset?"
"Yes."
He walked in and sat on the edge of the bed.
"She'll get over it.
Kids fall out.
Sophie will come around."
I looked at him.
"Will she?"
Something shifted in his face.
Just for a second.
Then the easy smile came back.
"Of course she will.
They've been friends since they were five years old."
I picked up my phone.
Turned it over.
Held it out to him.
He looked down at the screen.
The smile didn't disappear all at once.
It left slowly, the way color drains from a face when someone realizes they've been caught and there is no version of this they can talk their way out of.
"Where did you get that?"
"Does it matter?"
"That's not — it's not what it looks like."
"Your hand is on hers, Mark."
He stood up.
Walked to the window.
His back was to me.
"We were just talking.
Linda was going through something difficult and I was being a friend."
"Sophie says her mother tried to end it three months ago.
Sophie says you went to their house when Linda wasn't home.
When Sophie was there alone."
He turned around fast.
"Sophie is sixteen years old.
She doesn't know what she's talking about."
"She was crying on the phone.
She said you said things to her she will never forget."
"I went over there to talk to Linda.
Sophie answered the door and I asked her where her mother was.
That's it.
That's the whole story."
I didn't say anything.
"You're going to believe a teenager over your own husband?"
"I'm going to believe what I saw in that photo."
He crossed the room.
Sat back down.
His voice dropped.
"Listen to me.
It was a mistake.
It was a stupid, stupid mistake and it's over.
It has been over.
Linda ended it and I respected that.
There is nothing going on."
"How long?"
He didn't answer.
"How long, Mark?"
"Four months."
The number landed like something physical.
Four months.
Emma had spent three of those months making Sophie a scrapbook.
One photograph for every year of their friendship.
While her father was doing this.
I stood up.
"Where are you going?"
"To check on our daughter."
"We need to talk about this."
I stopped in the doorway.
"We will.
But right now Emma is sitting on her bedroom floor next to a dress she'll never get to wear, crying because her best friend won't speak to her and she doesn't know why." I looked at him.
"You're going to have to live with that."
I walked down the hall.
Behind me, I heard him sit back down on the bed.
The mattress springs.
Then silence.
Emma's door was half open.
She was still on the floor, the pink dress folded across her lap, her phone face-up beside her.
She'd been checking it every few minutes all evening.
Waiting for Sophie to text back.
She looked up when she heard me.
"Mom?
Is everything okay?"
I sat down on the floor beside her.
"Not entirely," I said.
"But it will be."
She leaned her head against my shoulder.
I put my arm around her and looked at the dress.
Pale pink.
Sophie had chosen it.
*You'll stand right beside me in every picture.*
My phone was still in my hand.
The unknown number.
The photo with no caption.
Someone had sent that to me deliberately.
Someone who knew.
Someone who wanted me to see it.
I looked at the number again.
Then I opened a new message and typed three words.
*Who are you?*
I hit send.
The reply came in less than a minute.
*Someone who thinks you deserve the truth.
May you like
There's more.
Can we meet?*
