Building the future he repeatedly told me belonged to both of us.
But Grant had never gone to Bellhaven.
And the humiliating emergency waiting for him at Mercy St. Catherine had not happened entirely by chance.
Three nights earlier, a mechanical failure had forced my flight to Boston to return to Lakehurst before takeoff.
I had been scheduled to speak at a financial leadership conference.
Grant believed I would be gone until Sunday.
Instead of calling him, I decided to surprise him.
I stopped at a bakery downtown and bought the cinnamon pastries he pretended not to love. On the drive home, I imagined finding him asleep in his office with a spreadsheet open beside him.
I pictured him smiling when he saw me.
I pictured us opening a bottle of wine.
I pictured many things.
None of them included hearing a woman laugh inside my bedroom.
I entered the house through the side door.
Grant’s car was in the garage.
Tessa’s red convertible was parked two streets away, partially hidden beneath a row of trees.
I did not notice it until later.
At first, I thought Grant was speaking to someone on the phone.
Then the woman laughed again.
I knew that laugh.
Tessa used it whenever she wanted a room to notice her.
She had married my brother, Mason, four years earlier in a lavish ceremony at our family’s lakefront estate. I had stood beside her in a pale blue bridesmaid dress while she promised to love him through every triumph and every hardship.
Now she was upstairs with my husband.
I climbed the staircase without making a sound.
The bedroom door was open several inches.
Through the narrow space, I saw Grant sitting against our headboard.
Tessa was beside him, wearing one of my robes.
My cream silk robe.
