Chapter 4 - Sophie Stops Asking Her Husband for Permission
On Monday, Sophie called a digital-forensics consultant in Morristown.
Tara Mills spent the first twenty minutes explaining what she could and could not prove.
She could preserve device data.
Review available account-access history.
Compare the alleged screenshots with Sophie’s actual message archives and backups.
She could not magically identify who typed every sentence from a screenshot alone.
Sophie appreciated that.
Reality sounded less exciting than television.
It also sounded harder to manipulate.
The review would cost several thousand dollars.
Sophie paid the retainer.
Then she called her boss.
She had been offered the Boston position two months earlier.
She had declined it because Daniel did not want to leave New Jersey.
Sophie had never told Vanessa that the offer was dead.
Daniel knew.
That fact bothered her.
The fake messages repeatedly described Boston as if Sophie were secretly planning to take the job.
Someone had known enough about the real opportunity to build a convincing lie around it.
But not enough to know Sophie had already turned it down.
Tara asked Sophie for every screenshot Daniel had received.
Daniel sent them that evening.
He also sent a message.
I know you have no reason to trust me. I’m going to give you everything anyway.
Sophie did not answer.
She remained in the hotel for four more nights.
Then rented a furnished apartment in Cranford for one month.
Daniel objected.
Not angrily.
That almost made it harder.
“You don’t have to move out of your own house.”
“I can’t sleep there.”
“I’ll stay somewhere else.”
“I need somewhere that doesn’t contain five months of people going through my private life.”
Daniel looked as if she had slapped him this time.
Sophie hated that she still noticed.
At the apartment she began writing down the sequence.
Boston interview.
Vanessa’s first warning to Daniel.
Daniel giving her the password.
Repeated account access.
Birthday dinner.
Fake screenshots.
Daniel finding no messages.
Vanessa attacking Sophie after Sophie discovered the login history.
Three days later, Tara called.
“I found something useful.”
Sophie sat up.
“The screenshots Daniel sent me show conversations supposedly occurring over several weeks.”
“Yes.”
“Your local phone backups cover that entire period.”
“And?”
“There is no corresponding conversation.”
Sophie exhaled.
“That proves they’re fake?”
“It strongly supports that these screenshots do not reflect the message database on your phone. I want to be precise.”
“Okay.”
“There’s something else.”
Tara had found genuine emails between Sophie and friends discussing Daniel.
Private ones.
One contained the sentence:
Sometimes I feel like I married Daniel and his sister at the same time.
Another:
He’s scared to disappoint Vanessa.
Lines from both emails had been echoed almost word for word inside the fake conversation with Aaron.
Sophie’s stomach turned.
Vanessa had not simply invented infidelity.
She had read Sophie’s private frustration and reshaped it into betrayal.
That explained why the messages had sounded like Sophie.
They were built from her actual words.
Tara continued.
“Whoever created these knew your private correspondence.”
Sophie looked at the Summit login history.
May you like
She already knew who had been reading it.
What she still did not understand was why Daniel had handed Vanessa the key.
