Chapter Five
Sarah
The house was quiet. Not the peaceful quiet of a library, but the suffocating silence of a tomb.
It was late, two days after her meeting with the lawyer. Sarah was sitting on the floor of the home office, surrounded by the few boxes she hadn't sent to storage—mostly financial records and tax documents she needed to copy for the divorce filing.
She needed a PDF scanner. Her phone was dead, charging in the kitchen.
Her eyes landed on Harrison’s old iPad Pro, sitting on the dusty shelf between a stack of Architectural Digest magazines. He hadn't used it in months, having upgraded to a newer model for work, but he kept it logged in for streaming sports.
Sarah reached for it. She blew the dust off the screen and pressed the power button. It had 12% battery left.
The screen illuminated. The Apple logo glowed white, then the home screen appeared.
Almost immediately, a notification banner slid down from the top.
iCloud: Photos and Messages Updated. 4,021 items downloaded.
Sarah frowned. He must have changed his cloud settings on his new phone, and the old device, sensing a Wi-Fi connection, had performed a full sync of his current data.
Her thumb hovered over the Messages icon. She knew she shouldn't. The lawyer had said she didn't need proof; the admission in the living room was enough. But the human need to know the blast radius of the explosion was overpowering.
She tapped the green icon.
The threads populated instantly. At the top was Emily.
Sarah felt a phantom punch to the gut. She opened the thread. She didn't scroll to the bottom. She scrolled up. She wanted to see the history. She wanted to see the cancer growing.
She stopped at a date: November 24th. Thanksgiving.
Sarah remembered that day vividly. She had spent six hours brining a turkey. Her feet had swollen. Harrison had been "helpful," running drinks, while Emily sat at the counter drinking wine.
Harrison (2:14 PM): She’s basting the turkey. Everyone is in the living room watching the game.
Emily (2:15 PM): I’m bored. And I’m not wearing panties under this dress. You noticed, right?
Harrison (2:16 PM): I noticed. I can’t stop looking at your legs.
Emily (2:18 PM): Go to the guest bathroom upstairs. Pretend you have a stomach ache. Give me two minutes, then come find me.
Harrison (2:20 PM): On my way. Be on your knees when I get there.
Sarah dropped the iPad onto the carpet as if it were burning hot.
She gasped for air, the memory of that Thanksgiving twisting in her mind. She remembered him coming downstairs twenty minutes later, looking flushed, apologizing for his "bad clam." She had made him peppermint tea. She had rubbed his back.
He had just been with her. In my guest bathroom. While I cooked his dinner.
Trembling, she picked the tablet up again. She had to see it all.
She scrolled to a random Tuesday in October.
Harrison (6:30 PM): She’s on a call with the contractors. She won't be done for an hour.
Emily (6:32 PM): Perfect. Meet me in the garage? inside the SUV?
Harrison (6:33 PM): No. Too cold. Come to the basement. The storage room.
Emily (6:40 PM): I want you to hurt me a little today.
Harrison (6:41 PM): I’m going to wreck you.
Tears were streaming down Sarah’s face now, hot and angry. The language... it wasn't the Harrison she knew. The Harrison she knew was gentle. He asked if she was okay. He was vanilla.
This Harrison—the one in the blue bubbles—was dominant, crude, and insatiable. He spoke to Emily like she was an object, and Emily loved it. They dissected their sexual encounters with a clinical, pornographic detail that made Sarah nauseous.
Harrison: I love the way you take it.
Harrison: You’re so much tighter than her. It’s a different world.
Emily: Does she suspect?
Harrison: No. She’s too busy with her blueprints. She thinks I’m working late.
"I was building our future," Sarah whispered to the screen, her voice cracking. "You bastard. I was building our life."
She closed the messages. She couldn't take the words anymore. But her finger drifted to the Photos app.
Don't do it, Sarah.
She did it.
The grid filled with recent photos. Screenshots of memes. A picture of a lunch receipt. And then, a block of photos from three months ago.
Date: August 14th - August 16th.
Sarah froze. August 14th. That was the weekend of the AIA Conference in Chicago. She had begged Harrison to come with her, to turn it into a mini-vacation. He had declined, saying he had a critical project launch and needed to work through the weekend. He had stayed home. Or so he said.
The photos told a different story.
The first image was the dashboard of his car. Emily’s feet were on the dashboard, painted toes wiggling against the windshield. The geolocation tag read: Lake Tahoe, CA.
She swiped.
A selfie of them. They were on a boat. Harrison was shirtless, wearing sunglasses, holding a beer. He looked younger. Carefree. Emily was in a tiny bikini, pressing her chest against his arm, laughing with her mouth wide open.
She swiped.
A photo of a bedroom. Not their bedroom. A rustic cabin suite with a fireplace. There was a bucket of champagne on the table.
She swiped.
This one broke her.
It was a video. Sarah pressed play.
The camera was propped up on a dresser. It showed Harrison and Emily in the bed. They were under the sheets, but it was obvious what was happening. They were giggling, whispering.
"Say it," Emily’s voice came from the speaker, tinny and high. "Say who you'd rather be with."
Harrison, kissing her neck, mumbled, "I'm with you. I'm right here."
"But who is better?" Emily pressed, grabbing his face. "Me or the Architect?"
Harrison laughed. A cruel, dismissive sound. "Stop. You know it’s you. It’s always been the fun ones, right?"
The video ended.
Sarah sat in the silence of the office. The screen went black as the auto-lock engaged, reflecting her own face back at her. Her eyes were red, her skin splotchy.
He hadn't just cheated. He had taken a vacation from their marriage. He had spent their joint account money to take her sister to a lake house while Sarah was sitting in seminars learning how to maximize square footage for their retirement home.
The "work project" was Emily. The "bad clam" was Emily. The "late nights" were Emily.
Every memory of the last year was a lie. Every time she had kissed him, she had been kissing a liar.
Sarah stood up slowly. A cold, dangerous calm settled over her, replacing the tears. This wasn't a mistake. This wasn't a "slip up." This was a campaign.
She walked to the printer. She plugged the iPad into her laptop with a white cable.
She didn't smash the iPad. That was too emotional.
Instead, she hit Export. She downloaded every photo. She saved every text thread as a PDF.
She sent the file to Mr. Vance with a subject line: Exhibit A through Z.
And then she took a deep breath, letting relief wash over her body.