Chương 6
“Keep it,” she said.
Cal leaned the frame against the wall.
Mara opened LinkedIn again and typed to Tessa.
I did not block your number. I did not know your last name until now.
Tessa replied within a minute.
He told me you found my contact information months ago. He said you sent messages from unknown numbers and then deleted them.
I have never contacted you.
A longer pause followed.
Would you be willing to speak by phone?
Mara looked through the kitchen doorway. Omar and Lucas were carrying her father’s recliner toward the front door. Cal walked backward ahead of them, guiding one corner around the wall.
Mara typed, At noon Mountain time.
Thank you.
At eleven fifty-eight, she went into the backyard.
The aluminum chair beneath the cottonwood was cold and slightly damp. She wiped it with her sleeve before sitting. Leaves moved across the grass in dry, scraping circles.
Tessa called exactly at noon.
“Hello?” Her voice was lower than Mara expected.
“This is Mara.”
“I know.” Tessa inhaled. “That sounded stupid. I’m sorry.”
Neither woman spoke.
A dog barked two houses away.
Tessa said, “I didn’t know.”
Mara watched a leaf catch beneath the fence. “What didn’t you know?”
“That you were still together.”
“We are married.”
“He said the paperwork was filed in May.”
“It wasn’t.”
“He showed me.”
“Showed you what?”
“A divorce complaint. Your names were on it.”
Mara sat straighter. “Did it have a case number?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did it have a court stamp?”
“I—maybe. It looked official.”
“You didn’t check?”
Tessa’s breathing sharpened. “I’m aware of how foolish that sounds.”
“I didn’t say foolish.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Mara pressed her thumb against the ridge of the chair’s metal arm. “When did you meet him?”
“February. Our companies were working on the Northline offices.”
“I know that project.”
“He said you had moved into your father’s house to take care of him.”
“My father died in January.”
Tessa went quiet.
“Evan knew,” Mara said.
“He told me your father was ill.”
“He was. Then he died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did Evan tell you my father was still alive?”
“Not directly. He said you were in Denver most of the time and he was alone in the house.”
Mara looked at the upstairs window of her father’s bedroom. The curtains had been removed, leaving a dark square.
“I went to Denver four times after the funeral,” she said. “Each trip was three or four days.”
Tessa made a sound that might have been a word before she stopped herself.
“When did you begin seeing him?” Mara asked.
“We had coffee in March. Then dinner. Nothing happened until June.”
“After he showed you the papers?”
“Yes.”
“In Maine?”
“What?”
“Did he tell you where he went in June?”
“He said Denver.”
Mara closed her eyes.
The vows at the inn had been Evan’s idea. They had stood on a rocky beach after dinner, cold wind pushing Mara’s hair across her face. Evan took her hands and recited the first two lines from their wedding, then lost his place and made up the rest. She had laughed. He had kissed her with salt on his mouth.
Tessa said, “Mara?”
“I’m here.”
“I ended it this morning.”
“Evan told me he ended it.”
“He would.”
The bitterness in Tessa’s voice was not performative. It sounded exhausted.
“Why did he say I blocked you?”
“I don’t know.”
“He told me not to send the airport video to anyone because you have a son.”
Tessa went silent again.
Mara heard a car pass on Tessa’s end of the line, then a signal clicking steadily.
“My son is fifteen,” Tessa said. “His father and I have been divorced six years. He knows I was seeing someone, but he doesn’t know who.”
“I’m not posting the video.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t.”
The car signal stopped.
“That’s fair,” Tessa said.
Mara had wanted defensiveness. She had wanted Tessa to declare innocence too loudly or blame Evan so completely that Mara could distrust her. Instead, Tessa sounded like a woman who had slept badly and discovered that every sentence of the last six months required inspection.
“What were you going to Savannah for?” Mara asked.
Tessa gave a short, joyless laugh. “He told you Savannah?”
“That’s where he said you were going.”
“We were going to Charleston.”
Mara stood and walked toward the fence, then back to the chair.
“What was the trip?”
“My birthday was next week. He said he couldn’t be away then because of work.”
“Saturday is our anniversary.”
“Oh.”
The word was barely audible.
Mara waited for the pain to become useful. It did not.
Tessa said, “He told me your anniversary was in April.”
“It’s October seventeenth.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Did he plan to leave me?”
“He said he had.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Tessa was quiet long enough that Mara heard the faint warning tone of a pedestrian crossing on her end.
“He leased an apartment,” Tessa said.
The yard seemed to tilt.
“When?”
“Last month.”
“Where?”
“Near Rittenhouse. He said he’d move in after your father’s house sold.”
Mara sat again.
“He tied it to the closing?”
“He said you needed the proceeds before you could afford separate places.”
“The proceeds are mine and Cal’s.”
“I know that now.”
Mara looked down at her left hand. The wedding ring had left a shallow indentation above her knuckle.
“Did you see the apartment?”
“Online. He sent pictures.”
“Are you moving into it?”
“No.”
“Were you?”
Another pause.
“We talked about it.”
Mara nodded though Tessa could not see.
“I’m going to send you screenshots,” Tessa said. “Not all of them. There are things I don’t want—”
“I don’t want intimate photographs.”
“There aren’t any.”
“Good.”
“I’ll send the conversations where he talked about the divorce. And the document.”
“Why?”
“Because he lied to both of us.”
“That doesn’t make us partners.”
May you like
“No.”
The absence of argument made Mara angrier.
