Chapter 4
Kate's apartment smells like her — vanilla and something woody, a candle she burns too often.
I stand in her doorway with the key still in my hand and my pulse in my ears and I think: I've been here a hundred times.
Wine nights. Movie marathons. The time she had food poisoning and I brought soup and sat with her for six hours.
The time I came over with fabric swatches for the bridal shower and she held each one to the light and said this one, definitely this one, it looks like champagne.
I've been here a hundred times and never once looked.
Now I'm looking.
Her apartment is tidy — Kate is always tidy. White couch, gray throw, three succulents on the windowsill that she waters with an eyedropper. Books stacked by color on the shelf, which always made me laugh because she said she picked books by their spines the same way people pick wine by the label.
The desk is in the corner of her bedroom. Small — an IKEA piece with a single drawer and a hutch for her monitor. The drawer has a lock. I use the tiny key from the ring and it turns with a click that sounds too loud in the empty apartment.
Inside: her old MacBook Air — dusty, a fine layer of grime along the hinge that says it hasn't been opened in months.
She has a newer one she uses daily, a silver Pro that lives on her kitchen counter.
This one is archive. Storage. The machine where things go to be forgotten.
Charger coiled beside it. Two external hard drives.
A stack of business cards held with a binder clip.
And a plain manila envelope, unsealed, with nothing written on the outside.
I take the MacBook. I take both hard drives. I leave the envelope for now — I don't want to touch more than I need to. I want data, not paper. Data has timestamps. Data doesn't lie. She won't notice these are gone — she hasn't touched this drawer in months. The dust told me that.
* * *
Back at my studio. I've locked the door and pulled the blinds. The MacBook is older — a 2019 Air with a cracked corner on the case. It opens without a password. Kate never locks anything. She told me once: "I have nothing to hide, Danny. My life is an open book."
An open book.
The desktop has six folders: CLIENTS, PERSONAL, CAMERA IMPORTS, TAX, RECEIPTS, and one labeled simply K.
I open K.
It's organized by year. 2023. 2024. 2025. Inside each year, folders by month. I go to 2025, February.
Seventy-eight photos. More than the SD card. She kept a larger set.
The first thirty are duplicates of what I already have — the courtyard, the park, the coffee shop.
But there are more. Photos 31-50 are from inside Liam's Waverly apartment.
Not the wedding dress shots — those are later in the sequence.
These are casual. Kitchen shots. A table with two place settings — mismatched plates, a bottle of red wine, a candle.
A beer on the counter that I recognize as the brand Liam drinks.
A view from his window at dusk — the roofline across the street.
She was documenting it. Like a project. Like a portfolio.
I scroll to March. One hundred and four photos.
The hotel. My apartment. A restaurant I don't recognize.
Two I do — the Italian place on Pine Street where Kate and I once had lunch together, and the bookstore café with the exposed brick.
In both of these, there are two coffee cups in frame.
She photographed their dates the way I photograph my cakes — staging, lighting, composition. Aestheticizing the whole thing.
I open the EXIF on a random March photo. Camera: Canon EOS R6. Her camera. She's the photographer for most of these. But some — the ones where she's in frame — have the same five-ten angle. Liam's hands.
I check April. Fourteen photos. All from the first two weeks. Then nothing. The folder exists for May and June but they're empty. July is empty. August — one photo. A screenshot of a text conversation, too small to read at this zoom level.
I enlarge it.
Kate's phone screen. The contact name at the top says L.
Kate: I miss you
L: We talked about this
Kate: I know. I just wanted to say it once
L: Danny is my wife
Kate: I know
L: It can't happen again
Kate: It won't. I promise
Kate: I just needed you to know that it mattered to me
L: It mattered to me too. But it's over.
August. Two months after our wedding. She texted him. He shut it down.
My hands are flat on the table, pressing down hard. I read it again. Danny is my wife. He said that. He drew the line. After the wedding, after whatever happened in those five weeks, he ended it and she reached out and he held.
I don't know what to feel. Relief that it stopped? Rage that it started? Something in between that has no name — a recognition that my husband did something terrible and also did the one thing that makes it slightly less terrible, which is stop.
But Kate.
Kate didn't stop being my friend. Kate texted him I miss you and then she came to my housewarming party two weeks later with a bottle of champagne and a card that said "home is where the heart is" and she hugged me and I smelled her perfume and I thought: I'm so lucky to have her.
* * *
I go back to the K folder. I open the external hard drives.
The first one is work — event photos, venue layouts, client decks. Nothing personal. The second one is different. Labeled BACKUP. Inside, a single folder called ARCHIVE.
Inside ARCHIVE, subfolders — not named by month or year, but by initials.
L.P.
D.W.
M.K.
J.T.
R.B.
L.P. — Liam Patterson. My husband.
I open it. Everything from the K folder's 2025 section is here, plus more. Two hundred and twelve photos total. Notes — actual text files with dates and observations. I open one.
Feb 8 — first real session. He's nervous. Responsive. Told him D was working late. He relaxed after the second glass.
D. Me. I'm D in her notes.
Another note: Feb 22 — bridal shower went well. She suspects nothing. Hotel after. He's more comfortable now. Brought the R6. Good lighting.
She took notes. She kept records — not like a woman having an affair, but like a woman running a project. The organization is deliberate. Methodical. The same way her desk is organized, her apartment is organized, her cloud storage is organized. Kate doesn't do anything without structure.
I open folder D.W. Forty-seven photos. A man I don't recognize — dark hair, beard, nice smile. A woman who looks about my age, brunette, standing with him in what appears to be their living room. Happy. Unsuspecting.
M.K. Sixty-three photos. Another couple. Another apartment. Another set of staged, aestheticized images that look like date documentation.
J.T. Twenty-nine photos.
R.B. Eighty-one photos.
Five folders. Five sets of initials. Five men. L.P. is my husband. But the others — those are other women's husbands.
I'm not the first.
* * *
I sit in my studio with the lights off and the hard drive glowing blue on the table and I process this.
Kate doesn't have affairs. Kate runs operations. She targets couples. She befriends the wife. She seduces the husband. She documents everything — photos, notes, timelines. And then she moves on.
This isn't betrayal. This is a pattern. A system. A hobby she keeps in labeled folders on a password-free laptop in an unlocked desk like it's a scrapbook.
I close the MacBook. I stack the hard drives. I put everything in my camera bag — the padded one, the one I use for expensive lenses. I zip it shut.
I'm not going to her apartment to return these — not until I understand what I'm holding.
Because right now I'm holding proof that Kate — my Kate, the woman who zipped me into my wedding dress — has done this before. To other women. Other marriages. And she kept trophies.
* * *
I drive home at 4 PM. I stop at the grocery store because I need normal. I buy avocados and sourdough and the good olive oil and I make toast with everything seasoning and I eat it standing at the counter looking at nothing.
When Liam gets home I'm decorating sugar cookies. Flood icing — the kind that self-levels. You outline the shape, fill it in, and gravity does the rest. Perfect smooth surface every time, as long as you get the consistency right.
"You've been busy," he says, eyeing the cooling rack. Two dozen cookies shaped like flowers. I don't know why flowers. My hands chose the cutters without asking my brain.
"Farmer's market test batch," I say. "Thinking about adding cookies to the weekend table."
"Smart." He grabs one, takes a bite. "These are perfect."
"Don't eat the display ones."
He grins. Crumbs on his lip. My husband. Who cheated on me with my best friend and then stopped and then married me and then never said a word.
Who is Kate's L.P. folder — one of five. One of at least five.
I smile at him and the icing self-levels and the cookies cool in rows and I don't say a word — not until I know what all five folders mean, not until I understand the size of the thing I've found.
Tonight I'll go through every file on that hard drive.
Tomorrow I'll start looking for the other women.