Chapter 4: Everything He Didn't Say
I walked back inside.
Not because I was ready.
Because standing in that parking lot while Katherine watched me absorb what she'd just said felt like giving her something I wasn't willing to give.
Daniel saw me come in.
He started toward me.
"Emily—"
"Not here," I said.
"I can explain—"
"I said not here, Daniel."
He stopped.
His hand dropped.
I picked up my glass from the bar, took one sip, and set it back down.
My old classmate Sandra was waving at me from across the room.
I waved back.
I smiled.
Twenty years of practice smiling through things I didn't want to feel.
Jason had disappeared.
I spotted him near the far wall, his phone to his ear, his back to the room.
Katherine had come back inside and was standing near the coat rack, watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
Not guilt, exactly.
Something more complicated than guilt.
I walked to a quiet corner table and sat down.
Daniel followed and sat across from me.
"Tell me," I said.
He put both hands flat on the table.
"It was before we met.
I want you to know that first."
"Katherine said it ended two years ago."
His hands didn't move.
"That's true."
"We've been married for six years, Daniel."
The table between us felt very wide.
"It wasn't — it wasn't what you're thinking," he said.
"It started before you.
It should have ended before you.
It didn't.
That's the truth and I'm not going to dress it up."
"How long were you together?"
"We weren't together.
It wasn't — it was complicated."
"How long?"
He exhaled.
"On and off for about four years."
Four years.
The words sat on the table between us like something that had been there the whole time, just waiting to be turned over.
"Does Jason know?" I asked.
Daniel looked up.
"What?"
"Katherine said she didn't know if Jason knew.
Does he?"
"I don't know what Jason knows."
"But you know what you know."
"Emily—"
"Did you know she was married to him?
When it was still happening — did you know she was married to Jason?"
A pause.
One beat too long.
"Yes," he said.
I stood up.
"Sit down, please," Daniel said.
"Please.
Let me finish."
"You hired him, Daniel.
You hired her husband.
You gave Jason a job at your company while you were—" I stopped.
"Did you feel guilty?
Was that it?
Was hiring him your way of making it right?"
His silence was a kind of answer.
"That's why you looked at her that way," I said.
"When she walked over.
That wasn't old history.
That was something else."
"It's over," he said.
"I need you to believe that."
"I believe that it stopped," I said.
"That's not the same thing."
I picked up my bag.
Across the room, Jason had come off his phone and was scanning the space, looking for Katherine.
He found her near the coat rack.
Something passed between them — a look, a small shake of her head.
Jason's eyes moved to Daniel.
Then to me.
And I saw it then.
The way his expression shifted.
Not surprise.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Jason knew.
He had known the whole time.
I looked at Daniel.
"He knows, doesn't he."
Daniel said nothing.
"Jason knows about you and Katherine, and you gave him a job anyway." My voice was very quiet.
"What does he have on you, Daniel?
What is he holding over you?"
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"Answer me."
He leaned forward and said, in a voice low enough that no one else could hear: "There are things about the company that Jason is aware of.
Things that happened before I met you.
If those things came out—"
He stopped.
"If those things came out," I finished, "what?"
May you like
He looked at me steadily.
"I could lose everything."
