Chapter 1 - The Word She Shouldn’t Have Used
My younger sister called my husband “babe” in front of twenty-six people.
Everyone laughed.
Even me.
It happened halfway through my parents’ fortieth-anniversary dinner at their home outside Seattle. Chloe reached across the table for the wine bottle and said, “Babe, can you—”
Then she stopped.
Evan smiled.
“You’ve been drinking.”
Chloe laughed too loudly.
My father, Robert, was telling a story about the first apartment he and Mom rented after getting married. My mother was cutting cake. Nobody wanted one awkward word to become the memory everyone carried from their anniversary.
So I smiled.
Then, ten minutes later, I saw Evan’s hand beneath the table.
Resting on Chloe’s waist.
Not brushing her accidentally.
Resting there.
I stood and asked Evan to come into the hallway.
The moment we were out of sight, his expression changed.
“You’re imagining things again.”
“Your hand was on my sister.”
“She leaned into me.”
“That makes it better?”
“It means you’re doing what you always do.”
“What do I always do?”
“Turn one stupid moment into proof everyone is betraying you.”
That sentence hurt because he had been using versions of it for nearly a year.
You’re tired.
You’re sensitive.
You’re reading into things.
You’ve been anxious since the miscarriage.
Sometimes I had wondered whether he was right.
That night, I stopped wondering.
I returned to the dining room and let the party continue.
Later, Evan grabbed my upper arm when I reached for my phone.
“Keep accusing us and I’ll make sure everyone thinks you’re crazy.”
Dad pulled his hand away from me.
Chloe snatched my phone from the table.
“Maybe your husband needed a woman who wasn’t paranoid.”
I took it back.
Then I looked at the small security camera mounted above the open hallway entrance.
Dad had installed the system three weeks earlier after several package thefts.
Nobody else seemed to remember it.
I did.
“Then explain what Dad’s hallway camera recorded.”
Evan’s face changed.
I opened the security application Dad had shared with me while setting up his new system.
The first clip contained Evan’s voice.
“After Monday, I move the rest—and Natalie can’t afford to fight me.”
The room went silent.
Dad’s face hardened.
Then another clip started.
Chloe’s voice:
“And your father still doesn’t know that we—”
Evan lunged for my phone before the sentence finished.
Dad caught Chloe’s wrist when she reached too.
I hit pause.
Not because I wanted to protect them.
May you like
Because whatever came next had frightened both of them more than the affair.
And suddenly I understood that the hand beneath the table was not the only thing they had been hiding.
