Chapter 3
“How long?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
That sentence would become a pattern.
Nobody seemed to know exactly how long.
Not even the people doing it.
“What do you know?”
Andrea was quiet.
Then she said, “There’s more than the affair.”
I almost laughed.
Of course there was.
There is always more after someone says that.
“What?”
“Kayla has a son.”
I knew that too.
Jason had mentioned him once.
A little boy named Noah.
Six years old.
I had seen a photograph during the company picnic the previous spring.
Curly brown hair.
Missing front tooth.
A baseball cap that looked too big for him.
“What about him?”
Andrea didn’t answer immediately.
Then she said, “Kayla told Jason that Noah might be his.”
I felt my knees weaken.
I leaned against the car.
“What?”
“She told him they were together once years ago.”
I could barely hear her over the traffic.
“Years ago?”
“I’m telling you what she told him.”
“Jason didn’t know Kayla six years ago.”
Andrea said nothing.
That silence frightened me more than an answer.
“Did he?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes.
“How?”
“They worked for the same company before she transferred to Tampa.”
Jason had spent eighteen months working in Orlando seven years earlier.
Monday through Thursday.
Home every weekend.
I had been pregnant with nothing then.
Our daughter Emma had been eight.
I remembered packing Jason sandwiches for the drive.
I remembered waking before sunrise on Mondays because he liked coffee in a travel mug.
I remembered believing the assignment had nearly broken him from exhaustion.
Apparently exhaustion had not been the only thing happening in Orlando.
“Are you saying they had an affair seven years ago?”
“I don’t know what to call it.”
“What does Kayla call it?”
Andrea went silent again.
“One night.”
I laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because “one night” is the phrase people use when they want arithmetic to erase betrayal.
“Does Jason believe Noah is his?”
“Yes.”
The grocery bags sat forgotten in my trunk.
“Why?”
“Because Kayla told him the dates line up.”
“Did he take a DNA test?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think?”
Andrea’s voice changed.
“This is why I called.”
I waited.
“Noah has a father.”
“Kayla’s ex?”
“Yes.”
“Biologically?”
“Yes.”
That word cut through everything.
“How do you know?”
“There was a custody case.”
My heart started pounding.
“When?”
“Two years ago.”
“Andrea.”