Chapter 4
LIFE WITH A LIAR
“How about Belize?”
Duane is leaning against the kitchen island with a glass of red wine, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled to the elbows.
He’s been like this for three days—flowers on Tuesday, takeout from the Italian place I love on Wednesday.
Tonight he came home early, poured two glasses of the Chateauneuf-du-Pape we’ve been saving, and now he’s watching me with that half-smile, the one that used to make my chest ache with how lucky I felt.
“I know I’ve been buried in work lately.
” He sets his glass down, comes around the island, and slides his hands onto my waist from behind.
His chin rests on my shoulder and his breath is warm on my neck.
“We could use some time. Just us. A week on the beach, no phones, no board meetings. What do you think?”
His thumbs trace slow circles against my hip bones.
My shoulders lock. Every muscle from my neck to my tailbone goes rigid under his hands and I have to force myself loose—consciously, deliberately, one joint at a time—because if he feels me tense up like this he’ll ask what’s wrong, and if he asks what’s wrong I will tell him exactly what’s wrong, and it is not time for that yet.
“Sure.” I lean back into him. The back of my skull touches his collarbone. “That sounds amazing.”
“Yeah?” He kisses the spot behind my ear. My fists clench under the counter where he can’t see them, my nails cutting half-moons into my palms. “I’ll look at resorts tonight. Somewhere with one of those overwater bungalows. How about Belize?”
“Perfect.”
He squeezes my hips. Releases. Picks up his wine and takes a long drink, and the smile he gives me over the rim of the glass is so goddamn genuine that my stomach flips.
Cassandra Merrill is walking around right now with his ring on her finger and his baby in her body, and he’s standing in our kitchen swirling Chateauneuf-du-Pape and pitching Belize like a man who has never broken a vow in his life.
“I’m going to hop in the shower.” He loosens his tie the rest of the way, pulls it over his head. “Pick a movie? Something dumb. I need to turn my brain off.”
“Go. I’ll find something.”
He disappears down the hall. The bathroom door clicks shut. The pipes groan behind the walls—water hammering the tile, then settling into a steady hiss. I count to ten. Fifteen. The hiss holds.
His laptop is on the counter. Open. The screen dark but not locked—the cursor blinks when I touch the trackpad and the desktop blooms to life.
My heart slams so hard I feel it in my teeth.
I glance at the hallway. The shower hiss.
My fingers are shaking so badly the trackpad jumps under them and I have to plant my other hand flat on the counter to steady myself.
I open his email. The inbox is corporate—meeting confirmations, board agendas, quarterly reports. I type Cassandra into the search bar and hit enter.
Forty-seven messages.
The number sits on the screen and my lungs stop working. Forty-seven. The thread goes back years—before our wedding, before the engagement, before the Maldives proposal that made me cry so hard the waiter brought extra napkins. I scroll to the oldest one and the air in the kitchen goes thin.
Miss you already. Last night was bliss.—C
Dated fourteen months before he proposed to me.
I scroll forward. The messages stretch out, getting longer, getting explicit.
Her in hotel robes with the sash undone.
Him in a bed I don’t recognize—white sheets, brass headboard, a room-service tray on the nightstand.
A bathroom mirror selfie of the two of them, her head tipped against his shoulder, his arm wrapped tight around her waist, both of them smiling.
Hotel confirmations forwarded between them like calendar invites—the Portland conference in March three years ago, the one where I drove him to the airport and kissed him at the curb.
The Chicago summit the following fall. The Austin leadership retreat I packed his bag for.
I packed his bag. I folded his shirts and tucked his charger into the side pocket and zipped it up and handed it to him at the front door. And he took it and flew to her.
Bile crawls up the back of my throat, hot and sour. I press my hand over my mouth and swallow against it—once, hard—because if I throw up on this counter he’ll know. The shower hisses behind the wall. I keep going.
Six weeks ago: I found the ring. It’s being sized. Two more months and this is done. Four weeks ago: I’m going to handle the board. I’m going to handle the divorce. By next year, we’ll be together. You and me and the baby.
Two weeks ago: She doesn’t suspect anything. She’s planning a dinner party for the board next month. She has no idea.
She has no idea.
The kitchen tilts—the wine glasses, the island, the pendant lights—everything slides left and I grab the edge of the counter because my knees are going.
I pull out my phone. My thumb misses the camera icon twice before I hit it.
I photograph the screen. Scroll up. Photograph.
The hotel confirmations with their neat little booking numbers.
The photos—God, the photos. The message about the ring, his words right there in black and white: Two more months and this is done.
I am the thing being done. I am the problem he’s solving.
The shower cuts off. The pipes clank and go silent.
I close the email. My hands are jerking so badly it takes me three tries to get the laptop lid back to the angle I found it at. Phone into my back pocket. Wine glass up. I wrap both hands around the stem because one isn’t enough to keep it steady.
Duane comes down the hall in sweatpants and a towel draped over his shoulders, his hair dark and damp, trailing the smell of cedar soap into the room. He drops into the cushion beside me and reaches for his wine.
“Find a movie?”
“Still looking.” The words come out and they sound right. They sound like a wife who spent ten minutes scrolling Netflix, not a wife who just photographed forty-seven love letters from her husband to another woman.
“Belize is going to be great, babe.” He stretches, rolls his neck. The towel slides off one shoulder. “I was thinking the second week of next month. I can clear my schedule if I move the Tokyo call.”
“Can’t wait.”
He grins. Reaches over and squeezes my knee.
His hand is warm and damp from the shower and I stare at it—at his fingers pressing into the fabric of my jeans, at the wedding ring I put on that hand—and my jaw is clenched so tight that the pain shoots up behind my ears.
I want to grab his wrist and twist until something pops.
I want to slam the laptop open and point at the screen and say explain this.
Explain the ring. Explain the baby. Explain how you can sit here touching me when you told her you were done with me two weeks ago.
Instead I pick up the remote. I scroll through Netflix. He settles into the couch and within twenty minutes his head is tipped back, his mouth open, soft snores filling the space between us. The laptop is three feet away. His phone is charging on the counter, screen down.
She has no idea.
I didn’t. But I do now.
The nameplate on the frosted glass reads Roberts Investigations. My hand hovers over the door handle. My pulse is thudding in my wrists, in my neck, in the soft spot behind my ears where the headache has been building all morning. I push through the door.
A brass bell chimes overhead. The reception area is small—two chairs, a low table with magazines nobody has touched, a framed license on the wall. I don’t sit down. If I sit down I’ll lose the momentum that got me here, and I’ll walk right back out.
A door behind the desk opens.
Tall. Dark hair cropped close. A jaw that doesn’t belong in a fourth-floor office above a coffee shop.
White shirt, no tie, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm.
He looks at me and his eyes move fast—my face, my hands, the bag on my shoulder, back to my face.
Quick. Practiced. The kind of look that takes in everything without lingering on anything.
“Rachelle Webster?”
“Yes.”
“Jacob Roberts. Come on back.”
His office is small. A desk, two monitors, a filing cabinet, a window overlooking the street.
He gestures to a leather chair across from the desk—worn at the armrests, soft when I lower myself into it.
I set my bag on the floor and press my palms flat against my thighs to keep them still.
He sits across from me, tilts back, and folds his arms.
He doesn’t say anything. He watches me, his chin slightly lowered, his eyes steady and dark and completely still on my face. Waiting. I can hear the clock on his wall—a small analog clock I didn’t notice when I walked in, ticking softly in the silence between us.
I swallow. My throat clicks.
“My husband is the CEO of Webster Industries.” My voice sounds too loud in this small room. I press my palms harder against my thighs. “He’s been having an affair with a woman named Cassandra Merrill.”
Jacob’s expression doesn’t move. His arms stay crossed. His body stays tilted back in that chair. He picks up a pen from the desk without looking at it and pulls a legal pad toward him—one smooth motion, eyes still on me.
“I have emails going back years. Before our wedding.” The pen touches the pad.
He writes something, two words, and his gaze lifts back to mine.
I dig my fingers into my kneecaps. “I have a recording of Cassandra confirming the relationship to my sister. She’s wearing an engagement ring he bought her.
She thinks she’s pregnant with his child. ”
A muscle shifts in his jaw. The faintest tightening, there and gone. That’s all. He writes another line.
“Does he know you have the emails?”
“No.”
“How did you get them?”
“His laptop. He left it open and went to take a shower.” My voice cracks on shower and I clench my teeth against it.
Not here. I will not crack in this office.
My nails are digging into my jeans hard enough that I can feel the fabric bunching under my fingertips.
“I photographed the screen. Everything—the thread with Cassandra, hotel confirmations, the messages about the ring and the pregnancy.”
Jacob watches me claw at my own kneecaps and says nothing about it. His pen taps twice against the legal pad—soft, rhythmic—and he tilts his head half an inch to the left.
“What do you need from me?”
The question lands like a cold glass of water. No I’m sorry. No careful lean forward with the tilted head and the sympathetic voice. Just the question.
I sit up straighter. My lungs open for the first time since I walked in.
“Physical proof. Something a lawyer can’t argue away.
” My fingers loosen on my knees. I lean forward, elbows braced on the armrests of that worn leather chair.
“Emails get challenged. Screenshots get called fabrications. I need photographs. Him and Cassandra together—entering a hotel, physical contact, his hands on her. The kind of thing that can’t be explained as a misunderstanding.
Not for a divorce court, and not for a corporate board. ”
His pen stops. He uncrosses his arms and plants both forearms on the desk, leaning in. The distance between us shrinks. “A corporate board.”
“Webster Industries has a bylaw requiring the CEO to be married. He married me to satisfy it.” The words come out hard, flat, scraped raw.
Jacob holds my gaze. I hold it back. My breath is coming too fast—I can feel it, shallow and tight in the top of my chest—and I force myself to slow down, to pull air deeper, because I sound like a woman about to unravel and I need to sound like a woman with a plan.
“Most people come to me with a hunch.” He leans back again, tapping the pen against the pad.
“A suspicious credit card charge. A gut feeling they can’t shake.
You walked in here with names, emails, and a recording.
” The pen stops. He’s looking at me the way Duane looks at people he’s decided to take seriously—fully, with his whole attention—except Jacob isn’t performing it.
“You’ve done more legwork than half my clients do in a month. ”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had plenty of choices. You made this one.” He drops the pen and picks up my phone from where I’ve set it on the desk, scrolling through the screenshot folder.
His thumb moves slowly. His face stays level as hotel confirmations slide past, as Cassandra’s selfie fills the screen—the diamond ring, the glowing smile—but I catch the slight flare of his nostrils when he reaches the emails.
The explicit ones. He stops scrolling, sets the phone down, and looks at me.
“Three to five days. Possibly less.” He pushes the phone back across the desk.
Our fingers don’t touch but the distance is close—an inch, maybe two.
“I’ll need her address, her routine. The yoga class is useful.
If she’s predictable there, she’s predictable elsewhere.
Hotels have patterns—same day, same place. ”
“How fast can you start?”
“Tomorrow.”
My breath shudders out of me before I can stop it—one long, ragged exhale that I feel all the way down to my stomach.
I press my lips together and nod. My eyes are stinging.
Not from sadness. From something hotter, something that’s been building in my chest for days and keeps pushing up behind my eyes at the worst possible moments.
I stand. He stands. He’s a full head taller than I realized, and when he extends his hand his grip closes around mine—warm, firm, dry—and he holds it.
Not shaking it. Holding it. His thumb rests against the side of my index finger and his eyes are on mine and I feel it—a pull, low in my stomach, sudden and sharp, completely wrong for this moment and undeniable.
I pull my hand back. My palm is tingling where his thumb was.
“I’ll be in touch,” he says. His voice has dropped, just slightly, just enough. “Soon.”
“Thank you.”
I pick up my bag. Walk out of his office.
The brass bell chimes behind me and the hallway air hits my face—coffee, old carpet, the faint chemical smell of the elevator shaft—and I realize my hands aren’t shaking.
My jaw isn’t clenched. My breathing has settled into something steady and solid in my chest.
I push through the building’s front door. The afternoon sun lands warm on my face and I stand on the sidewalk for a moment, just breathing.
Three to five days. And then I’ll have everything I need to burn it all down.