7. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Bailey and McKenna both already knew about the wedding.
“Debbie told Bailey,” McKenna informed me when I told the pair about my lunch with my daughter. “Also, we all had to see this coming. It’s totally not a surprise.”
I supposed not. I hadn’t been all that shocked to hear it from Savannah. “The maid of honor thing’s unexpected, though.”
“If we all do our jobs properly, we’re not going to have to worry about that.” McKenna’s grin was so eager it looked almost manic. “You’ve got to hear the tape, Mr. C. Bailey almost caught Debbie in a slip-up.”
The tape. That part definitely was a surprise.
And a welcome one.
We hadn’t met downstairs this time around.
Bailey, McKenna and I sat around the kitchen table in the upstairs section of the house—both of them had been waiting for me there as soon as I came home from work.
I’d been expecting a long, detailed debrief of Bailey’s lunch with my ex-wife.
To find out whether she’d swallowed the ‘SecondChance82’ hook; whether she’d bought Bailey’s story about the whale on the Sweetheart app.
Instead, the girls had something much better for me.
I wasn’t going to get to hear about Debbie.
I was going to get to hear it for myself.
“I came up with the idea a couple hours before the lunch,” McKenna explained.
“We floated the idea of recording the meeting, but Bailey and I both agreed there was no way she’d be able to keep her phone out without Debbie getting suspicious.
” She leaned back in her seat, that manic smile returning. “Then I thought about my gear.”
“Your gear?”
“My streaming gear,” McKenna explained. “My channel’s not much to speak of, since I barely have time for it anymore with classes and all, but I do have a bit of a following.
” She glanced over at Bailey, as if the two of them were sharing some kind of private joke.
“I bought a little hardware for it. Business expenses, you know. Microphones and stuff.”
“Uh huh.” It made me wonder what other things McKenna had purchased and tried to pass off as ‘business expenses’ on her last tax return.
God, a run-in with the IRS was the last thing we needed right now.
“I’m not really into watching other people play video games, but I thought streamers used those big microphones? ”
“I have a little one, too. For specialized stuff.”
“McKenna helped me hide it in my outfit,” Bailey said, cutting me off before I could ask what McKenna meant by specialized.
“It’s really small—Debbie never suspected a thing.
Honestly, she was so absorbed in herself I think I probably could have brought one of the cameras from The Blair Witch Project with me and she wouldn’t have noticed. ”
“Man, I wish we could’ve shot video,” McKenna murmured. “I’ve got some great camera equipment.”
I ignored that. “You said you almost caught Debbie,” I said, turning to Bailey. “What happened?”
McKenna sat up a little straighter. “I think you’d better just hear it,” she said, opening her laptop.
“Savannah’s going to be home soon—we don’t want her listening to any of this,” Bailey added.
The way she batted her lashes let me know she was being a good girl and remembering her promise—and that she was hoping she’d be thanked for it later.
“Alright,” I said. “Let me hear it.”
Bailey moved the cursor, then placed her finger over the PLAY button. Both coeds paused.
“Uh, just so it’s in the open,” McKenna said. “This is Debbie reacting to your profile, Tom. Just with all the identifying features erased.”
“I know that,” I said. That meant it was bad—that Debbie probably said something mean about me. I’d kind of figured she would. “I’m a grown man. Go ahead and hit play.”
She did.
The first thing I heard was the sound of murmured conversation and the rustle of fabric. For a second, I thought the audio was corrupted—then I realized what I was hearing was the background noise at the place where Bailey had met Debbie. Wow, that microphone really is good, I thought.
It was. The first voice was Debbie’s, and it came through crystal clear.
“Let me see it,” my ex-wife was saying, snapping like she expected to be obeyed. “Is that his profile?”
I winced. None of the fake warmth she’d shown at the dinner party was evident in her voice—this was Debbie raw and unfiltered, with little more than contempt for the girl who’d spent so much of her formative years seeking shelter beneath her roof.
It made me mad to hear her talking like that.
I wished I could reach through the recording and shout her down, the way I’d done at the dinner table.
“He says his name’s Walter.” In marked contrast to Debbie, Bailey sounded so skittish and submissive that it made my heart jump into my throat. “He told me that at the Armada. I haven’t been able to get any other personal details out of him—”
“You don’t know?” Debbie chuckled in a mean way. “Really? You said he slept there—you didn’t sneak out and take a peek in his wallet while he was out cold?”
A pause. I glanced across the table: Bailey was staring at the floor like she was still a little traumatized, while McKenna was grimacing.
“I… I didn’t think to…”
Jesus. Even in a recording, the urge to hold Bailey tight and assure her that everything would be okay was strong. I scooted my chair halfway around the table and took my babygirl’s hand, gripping it firmly. She sniffed once, blinking back tears, then nodded to show she appreciated it.
“You’ve got a lot of learning to do,” Debbie said, sounding noticeably chummier. She must have noticed how thoroughly I’d been ensnared by Bailey’s texts. “Still, you definitely charmed him, didn’t you?”
My lips peeled back over my teeth. She’s reading our messages, I realized. The things Bailey and I said to each other.
I’d agreed to this. I’d even pitched it—I told both girls it was the surest way to make sure Debbie believed the con. And it was. It was just that I hadn’t really thought about how I was going to feel about my ex-wife seeing those messages until I was actually listening to her doing it.
Now I was glad McKenna hadn’t managed to sneak a video recorder into the restaurant. Witnessing the evil look on Debbie’s face as she read what had been sincere declarations of love and lust between Bailey and I might have made me blow my stack.
Then I heard it.
“I have fucked-up fantasies,” Debbie read. “Ones I can’t tell anybody about.” A pause. “They’d freak.”
Bailey went as white as a sheet.
Those were her words. The ones she’d confessed to me during our first interaction. Something she’d probably been carrying (along with a whole lot of shame) her entire adult life.
And Debbie was chuckling about it.
“Good lord,” my ex-wife said. “You laid it on thick, didn’t you?”
The silence stretched out on the recording. I couldn’t see what was happening, I could only imagine. What I imagined wasn’t good.
“Not that I’m complaining,” Debbie added, businesslike. “Looks like you told him exactly what he wanted to hear. ‘Babygirl, you can tell Daddy anything.’ Jesus, do you think these guys ever actually read what they write?”
I stiffened.
“I’m so sorry,” the real Bailey whispered.
More silence, broken only by the sounds of murmured conversation in the background. Debbie was clearly scrolling through the texts, taking in the shape of what BlueJay19 and SecondChance82 had built.
“That’s not HR appropriate,” Debbie read with a snicker. “Funny.”
Bailey’s voice. “Thanks—”
“Men don’t want funny,” Debbie cut in. “They want… well, they want what you gave Walter. Very good job on the pictures. Oh Jesus, I’d better hide that…”
“A waitress walked by with some people for another table right then,” the present-moment Bailey explained, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “Debbie had to minimize the photos.”
She skipped ahead through a few moments of silence and readjustment.
“—too soft on you,” Debbie was saying when she hit PLAY once more. “A man this far gone will pay for the privilege of being told no. Trust me, I know the type.” But there was something in her voice that sounded almost jealous. “You really only did this with him the one time?”
“Just the one,” the Bailey on the recording said. “Then the date.”
Another pause—I was starting to recognize those pauses.
They had a rhythm and a tenor all their own—they were the little gaps Debbie strung out on purpose right before she found a way to make you feel small over something you’d already apologized about.
Before she took what had been a nice date night or a family outing and ruined it over some inconsequential complaint.
God, how had I put up with that for so long?
“You didn’t discuss compensation before you agreed to meet with him in person?
” Debbie’s voice sharpened into something that could have almost been called maternal if your mother was disappointed in you for failing a pop quiz on how to be a whore.
“Bailey. Sweetheart. That’s Sugar Baby 101.
You get the Venmo, then you get the room key. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, okay?” Bailey’s voice on the recording jumped an octave.
Part of it was an act—she was supposed to be playing the terrified college kid, after all—but I could still hear the actual rattled young woman beneath the performance.
“He said the thing about the hotel, and I jumped on it. You told me I needed to make sure the whale bit down on the hook hard, right?”
I stiffened. Present-day Bailey’s hand tightened in mine. We got her, I thought. McKenna was wrong. She’s going to admit she set Bailey up—
“I don’t remember anything like that,” Debbie replied in a haughty tone.
The whole table slumped a bit. Damn.
“Did you get something out of the hotel, at least?” Debbie sounded like she was about to get a whole hell of a lot crueler if the answer was no. “Please tell me you’re not calling me for advice after giving this man a freebie?”