“The ones from his vasectomy,” I said, leaning back in my chair, folding my hands neatly in my lap. “Five years ago. Remember that day, Marcus?”
His jaw clenched. He remembered. We both did.
Jessica’s eyes widened. “What?” she breathed, staring at him. “That’s… that’s not possible. That has to be wrong. We’ve been careful, but not that careful, and—” She broke off, the words tangling.
“Sweetheart,” I said gently, “I’m sure you’ve been many things. Careful doesn’t strike me as one of them.”
Marcus swallowed hard. “There are… there are failure rates,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. “It’s not a hundred percent—”
I shrugged. “True. Nothing is ever truly guaranteed. But I think we can all agree that the odds are… not in your favor.” I tilted my head toward Jessica. “Especially considering your extracurricular activities.”
Jessica tore her gaze from Marcus and turned to me. “What are you talking about?”
“Brad,” I said simply. “From the gym.”
Her face went crimson.
“You had me followed?” she demanded, outrage breaking through her shock.
“Of course not, dear,” I replied. “I didn’t need to. Next time you post your gym selfies, you might want to check what’s reflected in the mirrors behind you. It’s amazing what you can see in a background. Or who.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, glancing down at the papers still clutched in Marcus’s hand. Then, quietly, “You never told me.”
Marcus dragged a hand down his face. “Jessica, this isn’t the time or place—”
“Not the time or place?” she snapped, voice rising. “You lied to me.”
“And you lied to him,” I added pleasantly. “Seems you two are more alike than you thought.”
The restaurant had gone hushed around us. People were pretending not to listen, which meant they were listening with every fiber of their being. The quartet had shifted into something more upbeat, a strange, jaunty soundtrack to our imploding triangle.
I picked up my clutch, laid a few hundred-dollar bills on the table for the meal and a generously embarrassed tip for the staff, and rose to my feet.
“Happy anniversary, Marcus,” I said. “Jessica, I’d say congratulations again, but I think you should call Brad instead. He’ll probably be more excited about the baby than my husband.”
Jessica’s lip trembled. Marcus pushed back his chair, half-rising as if to follow me.
“Olivia, wait—”
But I was already turning away, the candlelight flickering against the cut crystal as I walked past our table, past the wide eyes and whispered speculation, past the maître d’s strained smile. My heels were steady on the floor, my shoulders squared, my head high.
This, I thought as the cool night air hit my face outside, was only the beginning.
When I got home, I didn’t go to our bedroom.
I walked straight past the framed photos on the hallway walls—the kids on the beach, Marcus holding a baby Emma in his arms, the four of us on a Ferris wheel one summer, all sunburn and grins—and went to the guest room. I kicked off my shoes, hung my dress carefully over the back of a chair, and sat on the edge of the bed.
The silence in the house was thick, tinged with the faint hum of the refrigerator and the distant whoosh of traffic from the main road. I stared at the pattern on the duvet for a long time, my mind replaying the evening in slow motion: Jessica’s red dress, Marcus’s panic, the way the room had seemed to hold its breath.
I waited for tears. They didn’t come.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t hurt. I’d been hurt months ago, when I first suspected. When I watched Marcus’s phone light up late at night and saw him smile in that way that used to be reserved for me. When he came home smelling not just of sweat and cologne, but of someone else’s perfume. When he started spending more time at work events that never included spouses and at “networking dinners” where no one seemed to know the names of the colleagues he mentioned.
That hurt had been raw and consuming. I’d cried in the shower, where the kids couldn’t hear, my tears mingling with the hot water. I’d lain awake at night next to him, listening to his breathing, wondering how long it had been since he truly looked at me.
But pain has a life cycle. It burns, then cools, then calcifies.
By the time I hired the private investigator, something in me had already shifted.
Her name was Carla. She was in her forties, with sharp eyes, sensible shoes, and a dry sense of humor. She sat across from me in a small office that smelled faintly of coffee and paper.
“Tell me why you’re here,” she’d said.
“Because my husband is cheating on me,” I’d replied.
Carla had nodded, as if I were telling her the weather forecast. “And what do you want to do about it?”
“Know everything,” I said. “Everyone. Every place. Every transaction. I want a list.”
She’d studied me, tapping her pen against her notepad. “Most women who come in here want proof so they can confront him. Scream, throw things, kick him out.” A pause. “Is that what you want?”
I’d thought of Emma and Josh asleep in their rooms. Of the house with its mortgage in both our names. Of the company Marcus worked for, where he was CFO. Of the offshore account I hadn’t known about yet. Of the vasectomy I had.
“No,” I’d said. “I want leverage.”
Carla’s mouth curved into a small, approving smile. “All right, then.”
Two weeks later, she’d slid a folder across her desk to me. Inside were photos of Marcus and Jessica at a hotel bar, sitting too close. Marcus and Jessica exiting the same hotel two hours apart. Marcus and Jessica at his gym, standing a little too near the showers. Replicas of text messages. Screenshots of Instagram posts. Little pieces of a life he’d thought he could keep separate.
And then there was the side discovery, the one that had floored even Carla.
“These aren’t… affairs of the heart,” she’d said, frowning at the printouts. “These are affairs of the… accounting variety.”
That was how we found the offshore accounts. The shell companies. The suspicious transfers. She’d referred me to a forensic accountant and a lawyer. I’d sat in their offices, sipping bad coffee, feeling like I’d stumbled into some legal drama I never asked to star in.
The forensic accountant, a meticulous man named Harold, had laid it out for me in simple terms: “Your husband has been moving company money in ways his board would not approve of.”
My lawyer, Diana, had been even more blunt. “He’s committing fraud. Maybe he’s doing it to impress Jessica with big purchases—real estate in her name, for instance—but intent doesn’t matter here. The law doesn’t care if he did it for love. It just cares that he did it.”
“But you can use that,” she’d added, eyes keen. “If you’re willing.”
I’d been willing.
Back in the present, in the quiet guest room, my phone buzzed on the nightstand. I picked it up and squinted at the screen.
Seventeen missed calls from Marcus. Three voicemails.
Sixteen messages from an unknown number that, based on the all-caps text style and clingy punctuation, could only belong to Jessica.
I opened one at random.
HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO ME IN PUBLIC???
