Chapter 4: The Number I Didn't Recognize
I stared at the screen for a long time without moving.
The message sat there, plain and short, and the number above it was eleven digits I had never seen before.
I could hear Julian in the kitchen.
The sound of the letter being set down.
The chair shifting.
Then silence.
I typed back: *Who is this?*
Three dots appeared.
Then: *Someone who thinks you deserve to know the truth.
Check his location history on the joint account app.
The fishing cabin was booked.
He just wasn't the one who booked it.*
My hands were steady.
I don't know why.
They should not have been.
I opened the travel app we shared for points.
We had linked it two years ago for a holiday trip and never unlinked it.
I hadn't opened it in months.
There were two bookings under Julian's profile.
The first was a cabin rental.
Four nights.
Paid last Tuesday — three days before he left.
The second was a restaurant reservation.
Friday evening.
Table for two.
In a town forty minutes from the cabin.
I sat with the phone in my lap and looked at the wall.
Julian appeared in the doorway.
"I finished the first page," he said.
Then he saw my face.
"What's wrong?"
I turned the phone toward him.
Watched his eyes move to the screen.
He went very still.
"Who sent that?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"Nora—"
"Was it a fishing trip?" I asked.
He didn't answer immediately.
That was its own kind of answer.
"It was complicated," he said.
"That's not what I asked."
He came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed, a few feet from me.
He put his hands on his knees.
"I did go to the cabin," he said.
"My friends were there.
It wasn't — it wasn't what that message is implying."
"Then what was the restaurant reservation?"
His jaw tightened.
"One of the guys brought his girlfriend.
She brought a friend.
We all had dinner together."
"A friend," I said.
"It was one dinner, Nora.
Nothing happened."
"You sat across a dinner table from a woman while your wife was home alone with six-month-old twins," I said.
"And you didn't think that was worth mentioning."
"Because nothing happened."
"You're not hearing me," I said.
"I'm not asking whether something happened.
I'm asking who you chose to be while you were gone.
I'm asking what you thought was acceptable.
I'm asking whether, at any point during that dinner, you thought about the fact that I hadn't sat down for a meal without a baby in my arms in three months."
He looked at the floor.
"I didn't think about it," he said.
"I know that's not what you want to hear."
"It's the most honest thing you've said since you walked in."
He looked up.
"I need to know who sent that message," he said.
"So do I," I said.
"But right now that's not the most important thing in this room."
He was quiet.
"Go back to the kitchen," I said.
"Finish reading the letter.
All of it.
When you're done, come back and we'll talk."
He stood.
Hesitated in the doorway.
"Are you going to call the lawyer again?" he asked.
I looked at him for a moment.
"That depends entirely on what you say when you come back."
He left.
I heard the kitchen chair.
The sound of paper unfolding.
I looked at the unknown number again.
Typed: *Why are you telling me this?*
The reply came in less than a minute.
May you like
*Because he's done this before.
And the last woman didn't find out until it was too late.*
