Chapter 9
Saturday. The longest day of my life.
I drive to the grocery store because I said I'd go to the grocery store and I need to be somewhere and I can't sit in a parking lot for four hours.
Whole Foods. The big one on Ponce. I push a cart through the aisles and put things in it and take things out.
I stand in front of the spice section for eleven minutes reading labels on cumin brands.
Organic versus conventional. Whole seed versus pre-ground.
Indian grocery brand versus McCormick. I buy three jars I don't need.
My phone is in my back pocket and I feel it like a burn. Waiting for the text from Rachel that says it's done.
At 10:47, Sophie texts: Morning sunshine! Still doing that farmer's market next week? I want to get there early for the strawberry lady.
I type back while standing in the cheese aisle: Yes! Let's do 8am? Beat the crowds ??
Sophie: Perfect! I'll drive! ??
She'll drive. So we'll be in her car together. So she can control the departure time, the return time. So she's indispensable. So she's woven into the logistics of my morning.
I see it now. Every choice she makes is a choice to embed herself deeper. Nothing is casual. Nothing is "just."
I put a wedge of Manchego in the cart. I don't know why. I don't need Manchego. My hands just need to be doing something that isn't checking my phone.
11:02 AM. Nothing from Rachel.
11:15. Nothing.
11:34. I'm in the parking lot. Groceries in the trunk. Engine running. Air conditioning blasting because it's already ninety-one degrees and the inside of a car in Atlanta in July is a convection oven.
11:41. My phone buzzes.
Rachel: We're with him now. He's listening. He's upset but he's listening. Stay out another hour.
I stare at the text. Read it three times. He's upset. Of course he's upset. Three women showed up at his door with a binder full of documentation about a woman he thought was his wife's harmless garden friend and told him she's been running a playbook on his marriage.
Is he upset at Sophie? At me for not telling him? At the women for ambushing him on a Saturday?
I can't ask. Not yet. I have to wait.
I drive to the gym. I don't work out. I sit in the parking lot and I call my mother in Chicago.
She talks for twenty minutes about my cousin's baby shower and I say "mmhm" and "that's nice" and "tell her congratulations" and I don't hear a single word because my husband is in our living room learning that our life has a parasite.
12:30. Rachel: Done. He's processing. Come home when you're ready. He wants to talk to you.
I drive home in fourteen minutes. Breaking a speed limit I've never broken on this road.
When I pull into the driveway, Rachel's rental car is gone. Matt's car is still there. The house looks the same — beige siding, green shutters, the hydrangea I planted last month still alive despite my neglect. Normal from the outside.
Inside is different.
Matt is at the kitchen table. The binder is open in front of him — Rachel must have left it. His coffee mug is empty. His eyes are red.
"Hey," I say.
He looks up. "Sit down."
I sit.
For a long moment, neither of us says anything. He's looking at me like he's recalculating something — running new numbers, adjusting a variable he didn't know was in the equation.
"You knew," he says. "How long?"
"Since Tuesday."
"Tuesday." He presses his palms against the table. "You've known since Tuesday and you didn't tell me."
"I was told not to. If she found out — if she noticed anything different — she would have run. Disappeared. Changed her name and started over somewhere else."
"So you just — what? Watched? While she was texting me every day about—" He stops. Laughs. It's not funny. "About fucking tomatoes?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, Priya."
"I know."
"Why didn't YOU tell me? Why did three strangers show up at my house?"
And there it is. The anger I expected. Not at Sophie — not yet — but at me. At the situation. At being blindsided in his own living room by women he'd never met.
"Because if I told you, you wouldn't have believed me."
His jaw tightens. "You don't know that."
"Matt. If I'd said, on Tuesday night, 'That woman Sophie is a serial predator who's been targeting married women in nine cities and she has a handwritten file about our marriage' — what would you have said?"
He's quiet. His hand finds the edge of the binder. Runs his thumb along the laminated tab with my name on it. Back and forth.
"You would have said I was being crazy. Paranoid. You would have said she's just a friendly person who likes gardening."
"I—" He stops. Looks down at the binder. At the page it's open to — Sophie's profile grid. Nine faces. Same bone structure. "Maybe."
"Definitely."
He sits back. Runs both hands through his hair. Stares at the ceiling. The kitchen clock ticks. The neighbor's sprinkler hisses on and off. Normal sounds in a house where nothing is normal anymore.
"Rachel showed me the timelines," he says. Still looking at the ceiling. "Color-coded. Every husband. How long it took from first contact to — to the affair. The shortest was six weeks. Dallas." He brings his gaze back down to me. "She said I was at week eight."
"I know."
"Did she — with me—" He can't finish the sentence.
"No. Nothing happened. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I know I didn't do anything wrong." His voice is sharp. "I'm asking if she tried."
"The texts. The garden visits. The Thursday when you were there without me. She was building proximity. Making herself part of your routine."
"The texts about tomatoes. About fertilizer."
"Yes."
"That's not — that's just—" He shakes his head. "How is talking about plants an attack on our marriage?"
"It's not one thing. It's the accumulation. Fourteen texts a week. Every one of them below the line of inappropriate. Every one of them additive."
He looks at me. Something shifts behind his eyes — not understanding yet, but the beginning of understanding. The threshold effect. One compound means nothing. Together, they build.
"She asked me to help her fix her raised bed," he says quietly. "Wednesday. She said one of the boards was rotting and she didn't have a drill. Asked if I could come by this weekend and help."
My stomach goes cold. "What did you say?"
"I said sure. Tomorrow. Sunday morning."
Stage 3. Alone time. Extended period. Natural excuse. She would have been waiting for him in her garden with the rotting board and no one else around and all the proximity she'd been building for two months would have arrived at its destination.
"You can't go," I say.
"I know." He's still looking at the binder. "I know that now."
We sit together at the table. The kitchen is quiet. The sun moves across the counter, lighting up the spice rack — frequency order, the system that finally made sense. Salt and pepper at the front. Cardamom at the back. Everything where it belongs.
"I'm sorry," I say. "That they told you before I could. I'm sorry you found out from strangers."
"They're not strangers to this." He reaches across the table.
Finds my hand. His fingers close around mine and they're warm and rough and real — the hands of a man who digs in dirt on weekends and types spreadsheets during the week.
"Rachel showed me — her file. From Dallas. What happened to her marriage."
"Her husband left."
"For that woman. For Vanessa." He says the name like it's new in his mouth. Sour. Foreign. The name of someone he thought he'd never have to learn. "Eight months. Blew up a six-year marriage."
"That's what she does."
"And she was doing it to us."
"Yes."
He's quiet for a moment. Looking at the binder. At the map with our house circled. At the lines connecting us to the garden, the yoga studio, Sophie's rental — the geometry of a trap drawn in red ink on white paper.
"The raised bed," he says suddenly. "She asked me to help fix her raised bed. Tomorrow. Sunday morning." He looks at me. "That was it, wasn't it? That was going to be the — the next step."
"Yes."
"I said yes. I said yes without even thinking about it." His voice is different now. Not angry — scared. The quiet fear of a person who almost walked into traffic without looking. "I would have gone there. Alone. With tools. And she would have—"
"But you didn't. You won't."
His hand tightens around mine. "What do we do?"
"The group wants to confront her. All of us together. Make it impossible for her to run."
"When?"
"They're planning it now. Probably early next week."
He nods. Slowly. Processing. Then he looks at me — really looks, not through me or past me but directly at me — and says: "I'm sorry you didn't have anyone here. I'm sorry I was gone so much and you needed a friend and she — filled that."
"It's not your fault."
"It's not yours either."
I don't say anything. Because part of me still wonders if it is. If I'd been less lonely, less eager, less grateful for any hand extended in my direction — would I have seen it sooner? Would the off-notes have registered earlier?
Or is that what she counts on? The self-blame? The I should have known?
Matt stands. Pulls me up from the chair. Wraps his arms around me and I press my face into his chest and he smells like coffee and laundry detergent and Saturday and home. Not synthetic. Not engineered. Just the real, imperfect, ordinary smell of the person I chose.
"What do you need?" he asks into my hair.
"I need to see the group tonight. We're meeting at their Airbnb."
"I'll drive you."
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." He pulls back. Looks at me. "I'm part of this now. She was doing this to both of us."
I nod. He's right. It was never just about me. The friendship was the access point. The marriage was the target.
My phone buzzes. Rachel: Whenever you're ready. We're all here. Amy and Lauren arrived this afternoon.
I text back: Coming in an hour. Matt's coming too.
Rachel: Good. Bring the honey jar Sophie gave you. We need her fingerprints for the legal file.
I look at the cabinet where the honey sits. Golden-amber. Slightly opaque. Because you have layers, she said when she gave it to me.
I take it down off the shelf. Set it on the counter next to the Manchego I don't need and the three extra jars of cumin.
Evidence now. Not a gift.
Everything she gave me is evidence now.