Chapter 3: What My Sister Saw
The guests left in clusters, quiet and uncomfortable, like people filing out of a church after bad news.
A few of the women squeezed my arm on the way past.
Nobody said anything useful.
My sister Dana stayed.
She got Lily cleaned up in the bathroom while I sat at the kitchen table staring at the two halves of the wedding invitation.
The torn edge was clean.
I'd pulled it apart without thinking, the way you pull a bandage off — fast, before you can stop yourself.
Dana came back with Lily wrapped in a towel, hair damp, the frosting gone.
Lily had stopped shaking.
She leaned against Dana's side and looked at me with those careful eyes she'd had since she was three — always watching, always measuring whether the room was safe.
"Daddy," she said.
"Is Vanessa coming back?"
"No, sweetheart."
She nodded once.
Then she asked if she could watch something on the tablet, and Dana took her to the couch.
I waited.
Dana came back and sat across from me.
She put both hands flat on the table.
"Tell me what you saw on that phone," I said.
She didn't answer right away.
She looked at her hands.
"Dana."
"It was a name," she said.
"In the notification.
A contact name."
"Whose name?"
She looked up.
"Marcus."
The word landed like a stone dropped in still water.
Marcus was my business partner.
Had been for six years.
We'd built the company together from a shared office the size of a closet.
He was the best man I'd planned to have at the wedding.
"You're sure," I said.
"The name was right there on the screen.
Big letters.
I wasn't trying to read it — I just saw it."
"What did the message say?"
"I only caught the first few words." She paused.
"It said: *It's done.
He has no idea.*"
I sat very still.
The kitchen felt smaller than it had a moment ago.
The refrigerator hummed.
Outside, a car pulled away from the curb — probably the last of the guests.
"How long," I said.
Not a question.
More like something I was saying out loud to hear how it sounded.
"I don't know," Dana said.
"But that message wasn't sent today.
That kind of message doesn't get sent the same day.
That's a message you send when something has already been arranged."
I thought about the last six months.
Vanessa suggesting we move the wedding up.
Vanessa asking questions about the business — casual questions, the kind you don't think twice about.
Vanessa and Marcus in the same room at the company dinner, laughing at something I hadn't heard.
"I need to call him," I said.
"Don't." Dana's hand came across the table and covered mine.
"Not yet.
If they're coordinating something, calling him now just tells him you know."
She was right.
I knew she was right.
"Then what do I do?"
"You find out what *it's done* means," she said.
"Before they find out that you're looking."
I pulled my hand back and stood up.
Walked to the window.
The street was empty now.
Vanessa's car was gone.
*You'll understand soon enough.*
That's what she'd said.
Not *you'll regret this.* Not *you're making a mistake.* She hadn't tried to change my mind.
She'd said it like a fact.
Like something already in motion that I hadn't caught up to yet.
I turned back to Dana.
"Can you stay with Lily tonight?"
"Of course."
"I need to go to the office."
Dana stood up.
"It's eight o'clock on a Saturday."
"I know."
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
I kissed Lily goodnight.
She was already half-asleep on the couch, the tablet resting on her chest, the frosting long gone but the pink dress still hanging over the bathroom door.
I drove to the office with the radio off.
The whole way there, one sentence kept turning over in my mind.
*It's done.
He has no idea.*
When I got to the building, I used my key card at the front door.
The lobby was empty.
The elevator opened on the fourth floor.
The office was dark except for the glow of the server light in the back room.
I went to Marcus's desk first.
The drawers were unlocked.
They were always unlocked — we'd never had secrets from each other.
Or so I'd believed.
The top drawer held the usual things.
Pens, a phone charger, a takeout menu folded in quarters.
The second drawer held a folder.
I almost missed it.
It was tucked under a legal pad, no label on the tab.
I opened it.
There were three documents inside.
The first was a contract.
My company's name was at the top.
So was a name I didn't recognize — a holding company, registered in Delaware.
I turned to the second page and found the signature line.
May you like
My signature was on it.
Except I had never signed this contract.
