Chapter 5: The Name She Never Said Out Loud
I set the photograph on the table.
Diana didn't move.
"How long?" I said.
She looked at the photograph, not at me.
"How long, Diana?"
"It's not what it looks like."
"There is a lease.
There is a utility account.
There is a photograph of you at a house I have never been to, with a man I have never met, and his hand is on your back." I kept my voice level.
I don't know how.
"Tell me what it looks like."
She sat down on the edge of the folding table.
The laptop shifted.
She steadied it without looking at it.
"His name is Patrick," she said.
"We've known each other since before you and I met."
"And the house?"
"It's his.
He leases it.
I—" She stopped.
"I've been staying there sometimes.
When you travel."
"Sometimes."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
She looked at the floor.
"Fourteen months."
The storage unit felt smaller.
The orange roll door behind me, still open, let in a rectangle of grey afternoon light.
A forklift moved somewhere in the distance.
Its beeping faded.
"The twelve thousand dollars," I said.
She didn't answer.
"Did you give it to him?"
"I was helping him with something.
A business problem.
It was temporary."
"You took twelve thousand dollars from our joint account and gave it to the man you've been seeing for fourteen months."
"I was going to put it back."
"When?"
She looked up.
"When things settled."
I picked up the envelope and put the papers back inside.
My hands were steady.
I was aware of that in a distant way, the way you notice small things when the larger thing is too big to hold all at once.
"Who sent me the text?" I asked.
"I don't know."
"Someone knew exactly which drawer.
Exactly where the key was taped.
Someone who has been in this unit."
Diana's jaw tightened.
"Patrick's sister.
It had to be.
She never—" She stopped herself.
"She never what?"
"She never approved."
I looked at the corkboard again.
The photographs of me.
The dates.
I walked closer and read the handwritten notes beneath some of them.
Times.
Locations.
*W.
at airport 6:40am.
Return confirmed Thurs.* The notes weren't in Diana's handwriting.
They were neater.
More careful.
"Did Patrick help you build this file on me?"
Silence.
"Diana.
Did he help you document my schedule so you knew when I'd be gone?"
She stood up.
"I want to go home."
"That is not an answer."
"I can't do this here." She picked up her bag again.
"I need to think.
I need—"
"Maya is at home," I said.
"Our eight-year-old daughter is sitting in that house right now, alone, watching television, waiting for her father to come back and make her a snack.
And her stuffed bear — the last thing she has from her grandmother — is on a shelf in this room." I didn't raise my voice.
"You don't get to say you need to think."
Diana stopped walking.
"Tell me one true thing," I said.
"Right now.
One thing that is completely true."
She turned around.
Her eyes were wet.
I noticed that I felt nothing when I saw it.
"I was going to leave," she said.
"I had a plan.
I was going to leave you and take half of everything and go.
Patrick and I were going to—" She pressed her lips together.
"It was supposed to be clean."
"What stopped you?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
May you like
"The key," she said quietly.
"Maya found the key."
