Chapter 5: The Email I Almost Didn't Open
I stared at the subject line for a full minute before I clicked it.
The email was from a woman named Diane Colter.
She said she had found me through the food truck listing — apparently the seller had a community page where buyers sometimes introduced themselves, and I had posted a brief comment three weeks earlier when I first made contact with him.
She had seen my name there.
She wrote carefully.
Formally.
Like someone who had drafted the message several times before sending it.
She said she worked in the same office building as Brad.
She said she had noticed things over the past several months that she felt I deserved to know.
She said she wasn't trying to cause trouble.
She said she was a married woman herself and she would want someone to tell her.
Then she said: *There is a woman in his office.
Her name is Renata.
They have lunch together every day.
Last month I saw them in the parking garage.
I'm sorry.
I don't know how far it goes.
But I thought you should know it's happening.*
I read it twice.
Then I closed the laptop and sat in the dark.
My first thought was that it wasn't true.
Brad was difficult and thoughtless and sometimes condescending, but he wasn't that.
I knew him.
Nineteen years.
I would have seen something.
My second thought was quieter and landed harder: *Would you have?*
I thought about the last six months.
Brad working late more often.
Brad on his phone at dinner, angled slightly away.
Brad suggesting, twice, that I might enjoy a weekend visiting my sister in Ohio — alone.
Brad who had not touched me in four months and had not seemed to notice or care.
I had noticed.
I had told myself it was stress.
His job.
His age.
Something ordinary.
I opened the laptop again and wrote back to Diane.
*Thank you for telling me.
Can we meet?*
She replied within the hour.
She suggested a coffee shop near her office, Saturday morning, ten o'clock.
I wrote back: *I'll be there.*
I did not sleep that night.
I lay next to Brad in the dark and listened to him breathe and tried to find something in the sound of it that told me who he actually was.
Saturday came.
I told Brad I was running errands.
He was watching football and barely looked up.
Diane was already at a corner table when I arrived.
She was in her mid-fifties, neat and composed, with careful eyes.
She stood when she saw me and shook my hand.
"I almost didn't send that email," she said.
"I want you to know that."
"I'm glad you did," I said.
I sat down.
"Tell me everything."
She did.
Renata had joined the company eight months ago.
She was thirty-four.
She and Brad had been assigned to the same project team.
The lunches started within the first month.
Diane had thought nothing of it at first.
Then she saw them in the parking garage — not touching, but standing close, talking in the way people talk when they don't want to be overheard.
She had seen it twice more after that.
"I don't have proof of anything," Diane said.
"I want to be honest with you.
I only know what I've seen."
"That's enough," I said.
I drove home with both hands on the wheel and my mind completely clear.
Not numb.
Clear.
Like something that had been slightly out of focus for months had finally sharpened.
When I got home, Brad was still on the couch.
"Good errands?" he said.
"Very productive," I said.
I went upstairs and called my sister Carol in Ohio.
"I need you to listen to me," I said when she picked up.
"And I need you to not panic."
"Sophie, what's wrong?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
"But I think I'm about to find out."
There was a pause on the line.
Then Carol said something I hadn't expected.
May you like
"I've been waiting for you to call," she said quietly.
"For a long time."
