Chapter 3
Now I scroll.
But here's what I know about Google Photos — the shared album isn't her full library. It's curated. She adds to the shared album by choice. Her actual library, her personal account, is separate. I can't access that.
Unless.
I go to the kitchen. I pull open the junk drawer.
Under the rubber bands and expired coupons, there's a set of spare keys.
Kate's spare keys — she gave them to me two years ago when she went to Tulum.
"In case of emergency." Her apartment. Her mailbox.
And a tiny key on the ring that fits the desk drawer where she keeps her old laptop.
She told me that. Laughing, slightly drunk on rosé. "My whole life is in that drawer, Danny. If I die, burn it."
I thought she was being dramatic. Kate's dramatic — or I thought she was. Now I'm wondering if she meant it literally.
* * *
I don't go today. I can't. I have a consultation at 2 PM — the Hartwell wedding cake tasting. They want a four-tier semi-naked with fig accents and gold leaf. I need to be present. I need to be the competent professional who asks about dietary restrictions and sketches options on a napkin.
I shower. I put on lipstick. I drive to my bakery studio — a rented commercial kitchen on Maple Street with enough space for my ovens and my lighting setup.
The Hartwells are lovely. She's thirty-two, he's thirty-four, they finish each other's sentences and can't stop touching.
I watch them taste the lemon elderflower and share the same fork and I want to shake them.
Check his phone. Check his SD cards. Ask where he was on a random Saturday four months before the wedding.
I don't shake them. I smile. I take notes. I promise a proposal by Friday.
After they leave, I start cleaning up the tasting plates — wiping buttercream samples into the bin, stacking the little forks — when the connecting door between my studio and the shared prep space bangs open.
"Danny. Danny Danny Danny." Suki backs through the door hip-first, both hands holding a sheet pan at arm's length like it's radioactive. "Look at this. Look at what this woman wants me to make for her daughter's communion."
She sets the pan on my counter. On it: a photo printout of the most horrifying unicorn cake I've ever seen. Rainbow fondant mane. Googly candy eyes. A horn made of what appears to be a spray-painted ice cream cone. And — I lean closer — is that a fondant diaper?
"It's wearing a diaper," I say.
"IT'S WEARING A DIAPER." Suki slaps the counter. "She sent me a Pinterest photo. She said — and I'm quoting — 'I want it exactly like this but also elegant.' Danny. How do I make an elegant unicorn in a diaper?"
I laugh. Actually laugh — the first real one in two days. It comes from somewhere deep and surprises me.
Suki Okafor has been renting the prep space next to mine since I moved into this kitchen eighteen months ago.
She does custom cookies — elaborate, architectural, the kind with royal icing so precise it looks printed.
She has hands steadier than mine and a mouth louder than anyone's and she once told a bride that her color palette looked like "a hospital waiting room threw up on a mood board.
" The bride changed her colors. Suki was right.
"Tell her you'll do an elegant unicorn OR a diapered unicorn but not both," I say.
"I told her I'd do a horse. A tasteful horse with a very subtle horn. She said —" Suki puts on a high, breathy voice — "'But can the horse be wearing a onesie?'"
I'm laughing again. Suki grins at me — she likes making people laugh, chases it the way I chase clean piping lines. But then her grin fades. She tilts her head. Looks at me the way she looks at cookies that haven't set properly.
"You okay, though? For real."
"I'm fine."
"Mm." She pulls a stool to my counter and sits on it backward, arms folded across the top. "Your piping's off."
I look at the practice tier I left on the bench this morning — the cornelli lace from last night. It IS off. Not obviously, not to a client, but Suki can see it. The pressure varies in the upper left quadrant. A slight wobble in lines that should be serpentine.
"Your piping is shaking," she says. "That means either caffeine or crying. Which is it?"
"Caffeine," I say. "Didn't sleep."
"Hmm." She doesn't push. That's the thing about Suki — she notices everything, calls it out once, and then leaves space. She doesn't pry. She just... sees. And lets you know she sees.
"You want me to do the Hartwell proposal mock-up photos?" she asks. "I've got my ring light set up. Better than your overheads."
"Maybe tomorrow. I need to finish the sketch first."
"Tomorrow works." She hops off the stool, grabs the sheet pan with the unicorn abomination. "If I figure out how to make an elegant nappy, I'll let you know. Groundbreaking work in the fondant diaper space."
"Pioneering," I say.
"Revolutionary." She's halfway through the connecting door. "Also — I did a batch of cardamom shortbread this morning. Plate on your counter. Eat one. You look like you forgot lunch exists."
The door swings shut behind her. I look at my counter — there IS a plate.
Six perfect rounds of shortbread, edges even, the tops pressed with a tiny floral stamp.
Suki's signature. She leaves them for me once or twice a week, the same way I leave her offcuts of fondant in colors she needs for cookies.
The unspoken economy of neighboring kitchens.
I eat a shortbread. It's perfect — buttery, sandy, the cardamom blooming warm at the back of my throat. Something made by someone real, given without agenda.
I eat a second one. Then I sit alone in my studio with the lights off and I pull up the EXIF data spreadsheet on my phone. I've added a new column: WHAT WAS I DOING.
February 8 — bakery until 9 PM, anniversary rush order.
February 22 — I don't remember. I check my calendar. A Saturday. Bridal shower planning at Kate's apartment. With Kate.
Wait.
February 22 is the hotel photos. Kate in lingerie. But I was WITH Kate on February 22 — at her apartment, looking at shower decorations. From 1 PM to 4 PM. We ate Thai food and watched Pinterest boards and she helped me choose centerpiece flowers.
The hotel photos are timestamped 7:38 PM through 8:15 PM. After I left. She planned her bridal shower with me in the afternoon, and then at 7:38 PM she was in a hotel room in lingerie being photographed by my fiancé.
Same day. Same woman. Bridal shower planning to bedroom in three and a half hours.
I set my phone face-down on the table. I stare at the ceiling. The fluorescent light buzzes — the one over the dishwashing station that I keep meaning to replace.
I should be crying. I think maybe something is wrong with me because I'm not crying. I'm doing math. I'm cross-referencing calendars. I'm building a timeline like it's a recipe — add this ingredient, then this one, note the temperature and the timing and the way everything combines.
* * *
March 3 — the photos of Kate comfortable on Liam's couch. Jeans and a sweater. Candid. What was I doing?
I check. Monday. I was at my parents' house for my mom's birthday. All day. Drove there at 10 AM, didn't get home until 8 PM. Liam said he had a project deadline and couldn't make it. Mom was disappointed. I said he'd come next time.
He spent the day with Kate in his apartment. Close enough to comfortable that she has her shoes off and her feet tucked under her and she's reading her phone like she lives there.
March 14 — Kate in my kitchen wearing Liam's flannel, making coffee.
My old apartment, the one I gave up when we combined households.
I was still living there in March. Which means Liam brought his shirt there.
Which means Kate was in my apartment wearing it while I was — I check my calendar — at a dress fitting rehearsal at the bridal shop.
A fitting Kate was supposed to come to but cancelled last minute.
"Migraine," she texted. "I'm so sorry, Danny. You'll look perfect without me."
She wasn't home with a migraine. She was in MY apartment, in HIS shirt, drinking from MY mug.
While I stood on a platform and a seamstress pinned silk around my body and told me I was going to be a beautiful bride.
* * *
I drive home at 5 PM. Liam gets back at 6:30.
I make dinner — roasted chicken, the kind that takes an hour and fifteen minutes in the oven and requires basting every twenty minutes.
Basting requires attention. Attention means I don't have to look at my husband across the kitchen island and wonder how he can eat chicken I cooked and talk about his day and ask about the Hartwell consult while carrying this thing inside him.
"How was work?" I ask.
"Fine. Long. The Paulson foundation specs came back with seventeen revisions." He rolls his eyes. "Seventeen."
"Sounds frustrating."
"How were the Hartwells?"
"Sweet. They want fig and gold leaf. I think I can do something beautiful."
Beautiful. That word. Kate used it too. You look so beautiful, Danny.
"You okay?" Liam says. He's watching me. "You seem quiet."
"Just tired. The 3 AM baking caught up with me."
He smiles. "The cake was stunning. I took a photo of it before I left — hope that's okay. Wanted to show Pete."
Pete. The friend he was supposedly watching the game with on February 8 while Kate was in my wedding dress in his living room.
"Of course," I say. "Show everyone."
* * *
After dinner. He's on the couch with his laptop — actual work, columns of numbers, structural calculations. I'm in the kitchen packing away leftovers. I watch him from behind the refrigerator door.
Six months married. I know his face so well.
The way his eyebrows pull together when something doesn't add up on a spreadsheet.
The way he pushes his glasses up with his ring finger — the one with the wedding band I chose.
White gold. He said he didn't care what kind of ring but I noticed him look at white gold twice at the jeweler and I paid attention.
I'm good at paying attention to images. To details in the frame. To the things people don't know they're showing.
So why didn't I see this?
Because Kate was in the frame too. Standing right next to me, blocking my line of sight.
That's how a maid of honor works — she stands beside you and you trust her and you look where she points and you never think to look AT her.
She was the person helping me see everything else. She was my second set of eyes.
And the whole time, she was the thing I should have been looking at.
* * *
At 11 PM, Liam is asleep. I'm in the kitchen again.
Not baking this time. Planning.
Kate has keys to my apartment — the old ones, from before I moved. She never returned them. I never asked. And I have keys to hers.
Tomorrow is Wednesday. Kate works from home on Wednesdays — she's an event planner, most of her schedule is remote coordination.
Except this Wednesday she has a venue walkthrough at noon.
She texted me about it yesterday: Ugh, need to drive out to Greenfield for a site visit. Want to grab dinner after?
She'll be gone from her apartment from 11 AM to at least 3 PM. Greenfield is forty-five minutes each way.
I have her keys. I know where she keeps her laptop. I know her Google Photos, her iCloud, her Dropbox all auto-sync because she complained about storage fees last month and I helped her organize her cloud accounts.
I helped her organize the very system that might contain evidence of what she did.
I set my phone alarm for 10:30 AM.
Then I go to the counter and I pull out a fresh piping bag. Tip 1 — the finest line. I practice pressure control on a sheet of parchment. Featherlight. Barely there. The thinnest possible line of royal icing that still holds its shape.
Thin lines. Fine details. Things you have to look closely to see.
I've been looking closely my whole career. At sugar work, at fondant seams, at the play of light on buttercream. At whether a petal is curling correctly or a border is level or a color is slightly off from what the client requested.
I should have been looking at my own life with the same eye.
Tomorrow I start.