Chương 7
Are you sure Evelyn will not notice?
I stopped breathing.
Nathan’s response was underneath.
She never looks at financial documents.
I looked up.
Richard was watching me.
Not with pity.
With concern.
Because he knew exactly what that sentence meant.
It meant Nathan had not simply hidden things from me.
He had studied me.
He had built his decisions around what he believed I would never do.
“She knew,” I whispered.
Richard nodded.
“Possibly.”
“No.”
I pointed at the page.
“She knew.”
The anger arrived slowly.
Not like fire.
Like ice spreading through water.
Paige had stood in front of me wearing the coat.
She had smiled.
She had asked if I wanted to touch it.
She had known she was hurting me.
And she had known about this too.
“I want to see her.”
Richard’s expression changed.
“Evelyn.”
“I am not going to attack her.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because anger makes people predictable.”
I looked down.
The old me would have apologized.
The old me would have worried about appearing emotional.
The new me was not sure what she was supposed to be yet.
“I need to understand why.”
Richard was quiet.
“Sometimes there is no satisfying reason.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Because I needed proof that I had not imagined everything.
Because betrayal was easier to survive when it had a shape.
Because some part of me still wanted to know if Paige was a person who had made one terrible decision or someone who had been waiting for my life to fall apart.
“I need to know who I am dealing with,” I said.
Richard nodded.
“Then do it carefully.”
That afternoon, I met Paige at a coffee shop near Madison Avenue.
She agreed within twenty minutes.
That surprised me.
I expected hesitation.
Fear.
Excuses.
Instead, she arrived wearing a gray coat and no makeup.
For the first time, she looked younger.
Not innocent.
Just younger.
She sat across from me.
“You brought the lawyer?”
“No.”
She looked around.
“Then why meet here?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you without an audience.”
A small smile appeared.
“That is very different from the Evelyn I heard about.”
I felt my shoulders stiffen.
“What did you hear?”
“That you were emotional.”
The word landed exactly where she intended.
“And what else?”
“That you were struggling.”
“With what?”
She looked down at her coffee.
“After the baby.”
For a second, the world narrowed.
I could hear the machine behind the counter.
A spoon hitting a cup.
Someone laughing near the window.
Everything ordinary.
Everything wrong.
“You knew about my miscarriage.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Nathan told me.”
“When?”
She hesitated.
“Before we started seeing each other.”
I stared at her.
“You knew I lost a child, and you still became involved with my husband.”
Her fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
“I know how it sounds.”
“No.”
My voice stayed calm.
“That is not how it sounds.”
She looked at me.
“That is what happened.”
For some reason, her honesty hurt more than denial would have.
At least a lie would have given me something to fight.
“What did Nathan tell you about me?”
Paige looked uncomfortable.
“He said you had changed.”
Everyone had their favorite version of my failure.
Nathan’s was that I had become someone he could no longer love.
“He said you were angry all the time.”
I laughed quietly.
It was not a happy sound.
“I was grieving.”
“I know that now.”
“Did he?”
Paige did not answer.
That was the answer.
I looked at the woman across from me.
The woman who had worn my coat.
The woman who had helped my husband hide money.
The woman who still looked like she wanted me to understand something.
“Why did you wear it?”
Her face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“I did not know.”
I watched her carefully.
“Do not lie to me.”
She swallowed.
“I knew it was yours.”
The admission sat between us.
“Then why?”
She looked toward the window.
“When Nathan gave it to me, he said you never wore it anymore.”
I felt something inside me break.
Not because of the coat.
Because of the sentence.
He had taken something that represented the worst moment of my life and rewritten its meaning.
“He told me you were over it,” Paige said quietly.
I looked at her.
“I was never over it.”
“I know.”
“No.”
My voice became softer.
“You do not.”
Paige looked down.
And for the first time since meeting her, she looked ashamed.
“I thought he loved me.”
The words almost made me angry.
Almost.
Then I saw the exhaustion in her face.
The same exhaustion I had carried.
Different reason.
Same weight.
“And now?”
She did not answer.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She looked at the screen.
Nathan.
She turned it over.
That tiny movement told me more than anything else could have.
“Did he know about the documents?” I asked.
Paige looked up sharply.
“What documents?”
And in that moment, I knew one thing.
Not everything between them was shared.
Nathan had been lying to both of us.
I watched Paige for several seconds after she said it.
Not everything between them was shared.
The sentence should have comforted me.
Instead, it made the situation feel larger.
More complicated.
I had spent months imagining Nathan and Paige as a team.
Two people who knew exactly what they were doing.
Two people who had chosen to hurt me together.
But maybe the truth was uglier.
Maybe Nathan had created different versions of himself for everyone around him.
The husband who was grieving.
The businessman protecting his company.
The lover promising Paige a future.
The victim whenever anyone questioned him.
“What documents?” Paige asked again.
Her voice had changed.
The confidence was gone.
I did not answer immediately.
Part of me wanted to see what she would do without information.
Without preparation.
May you like
Without Nathan guiding the conversation.
“I think you should ask Nathan,” I said.
