Chapter 4 Proof
The next several weeks are the worst of my life.
I don't confront Blake. I don't confront Hailey. I don't tell Raina or Sierra or Cheryl or anyone else what I've seen and what I suspect. Instead I go about my days with a smile that feels heavier every morning and I pay attention to everything.
It starts with the receipts.
Blake has never been careful about cleaning out his pockets.
He leaves crumpled paper and loose change and gum wrappers in his jeans and I've always checked before doing laundry because I once accidentally washed a twenty-dollar bill and he complained about it for a week even though the bill still worked.
Before all of this I barely glanced at whatever I pulled out. Now I read every line.
I take pictures with my phone. Dates and amounts and locations and the names of the restaurants and bars printed at the top.
I save them in a folder that I bury inside another folder labeled "salon inventory" because if Blake ever picks up my phone to look at something or use my camera I don't want him seeing a folder full of his receipts.
The paranoia of hiding evidence from the person you're building evidence against is not something I ever expected to experience. But here I am.
Over the course of three weeks I collect four receipts that don't match the stories Blake has told me.
The first is from a Tuesday night dinner at a restaurant on the north side of town.
Two entrees and two glasses of wine. Thirty-eight dollars before tip.
Blake told me he was working late that night.
He came home at nine-fifteen and said the crew had been behind on the framing.
He ate leftover pot roast from the fridge and told me he was starving.
But he'd already had dinner. Two entrees means two people and thirty-eight dollars means a real restaurant, not a drive-through.
The second is a bar tab from a Thursday at a place called The Rail House.
Two cocktails and a shared appetizer. Twenty-six dollars.
Blake told me he was at Ronnie's watching a game that night.
I confirmed this with Ronnie the following week.
I was careful about it. I didn't ask directly.
I waited until we were all together and I mentioned the game casually and Ronnie said Blake had stopped by for about an hour and then left because he said he was tired.
An hour. Blake was at Ronnie's for one hour.
Then he left and three hours later a bar tab was charged to his card at The Rail House.
Where was he between Ronnie's apartment and that bar?
Who was he with? And if he was tired enough to leave Ronnie's early why was he drinking cocktails at eleven o'clock at night?
The third is a lunch receipt from a small café I've never heard of in a town called Grenville about twenty minutes north of Pinehurst. Two coffees and two sandwiches.
Seventeen dollars. Blake told me he worked a full Saturday that week.
He said the crew needed overtime to finish pouring a foundation.
He came home tired and dirty and I believed every word.
But you don't pour concrete in Grenville when your jobsite is in North Pinehurst. And you don't order two coffees when you're eating alone.
The fourth is a gas station charge at eleven-thirty at night on a Wednesday.
The station is on Route 22, which is on the far side of town, nowhere near our apartment or Ronnie's place or any of the bars Blake usually goes to.
He told me he was home by ten that night.
I was already asleep when he got back. I took his word for it because that's what I've always done.
But there's a charge on his card at eleven-thirty at a gas station that makes no sense unless he was coming from somewhere he shouldn't have been.
Each receipt by itself means nothing. People eat alone and order extra food.
People leave friends' apartments and stop at bars.
People stop for gas wherever they happen to be.
Any one of these could have a perfectly innocent explanation and if I were looking at them in isolation I'd probably accept it.
But I'm not looking at them in isolation.
I'm looking at a pattern. Two of everything.
Two meals. Two coffees. Two drinks. Stories from Blake that don't match the times and the places and the amounts.
It's the same pattern every time. He goes somewhere he says he isn't going with someone he says he isn't with and he pays for two.
I hate doing this. Every time I check his pockets I feel something rotting inside me.
Every time I photograph a receipt and slide it into that hidden folder I become a person I don't recognize.
I used to trust without question. I used to believe Blake because I loved him and because love meant giving someone your faith without demanding proof.
That version of me is dying a little more every day and I'm the one holding the knife.
But I can't stop. Because what's happening behind my back is real and the only person who seems to know the full truth is the person doing it to me.
I start tracking the money more carefully too.
The house fund shortfalls have been consistent for months but now I go back through our bank statements and compare Blake's deposits to the weeks when the receipts show up.
The correlation is obvious once you know what you're looking for.
The weeks he spends more on dinners and bar tabs are the same weeks he contributes less to our savings.
Sometimes the math is almost exact. Fifty dollars on a dinner receipt and fifty dollars missing from his monthly contribution.
Thirty dollars at The Rail House and thirty dollars short on the next deposit.
He's spending our future on dates with Hailey.
Dinners and drinks and motels and whatever else he's been paying for with money that should be going into our house fund.
Every dollar he spends on her is a dollar he takes from us.
From the house. From the life I've been working toward while he's been living a second one behind my back.
I buy a small notebook from the dollar store and keep it in my purse.
Every time Blake tells me he's going somewhere I write it down.
The date. The time he leaves. Who he says he'll be with.
Where he says he's going. Then I note what time he comes home and what he looks and smells like when he walks through the door.
The notebook fills up quickly.
Twice he tells me he's working late and both times he comes home clean. Not sweaty. Not dusty. Not smelling like the jobsite. His hair is damp. His clothes are the ones he put on that morning. Working late at a construction site doesn't involve a shower before coming home.
Once he says he's meeting the guys at O'Shea's on a Friday night. I text Chase the next day, casually, asking about his weekend. Chase says he stayed home Friday. He doesn't mention O'Shea's. I add it to the notebook. Another night when Blake named a person who wasn't where Blake said he was.
On a Wednesday he tells me he's going to the gym.
Blake has a membership at a place on the east side called Iron Works Fitness.
He uses it maybe twice a month. He used to go more often when we first started dating but lately it's become one of those memberships people keep paying for out of guilt.
He puts on workout clothes and grabs his bag and leaves at six-thirty.
I need to drop off some salon supplies to Cheryl because she left a box of color at my station by mistake.
Cheryl lives on the east side, two blocks from the gym.
At seven-fifteen I drive past Iron Works on my way to her place.
Blake's truck isn't in the parking lot. The lot isn't big and his truck is easy to spot so I'm not guessing.
It isn't there. I drop off Cheryl's supplies and drive home.
At seven-forty-five I pass the gym again. Still no truck.
He gets back to the apartment at eight-thirty. He's sweaty. He's carrying his gym bag. He tells me he got a good workout in and that he's thinking about going more often.
I don't say anything. I add it to the notebook. The date. The time he left. The time I checked the lot. The time he got home. Two hours at a gym where his truck never appeared.
I check Hailey's social media regularly now.
Not every hour. Not obsessively. But I check.
She doesn't post much that's useful. She's smart about her online presence.
There are no tagged locations at the restaurants from Blake's receipts.
No selfies with backgrounds I can match to places Blake claimed he was at.
If she's being deliberately careful then she's doing a good job and that thought alone tells me something.
You don't scrub your social media unless you have something to hide.
But she slips once.
On a Thursday night Blake tells me he's meeting some of the Premiere Builders crew for drinks after work.
He says he'll be home by ten. At nine-fifteen I'm in bed scrolling through my phone and I see that Hailey has posted a photo of a cocktail.
No location tag. No caption beyond a single emoji.
Just a drink on a dark wooden table with dim lighting and a blurred background.
I recognize the table. The finish on it. The style. The lighting.
It's The Rail House. The same bar from the Thursday receipt. The same bar where Blake paid twenty-six dollars for two cocktails and an appetizer on a night he told me he was at Ronnie's.
Blake gets home at ten-forty. He says the guys kept him out longer than he expected. I say it's no problem. I kiss him goodnight.