Chapter 9: Six Weeks

I texted Lila back at seven in the morning.

He's just tired. The yard is a mess this week. Go back to sleep, I love you.

She sent a heart.

I looked at it for a long time, and then I put the phone in the glove box and drove to the lumber yard.

The Hartwell office sat above the warehouse, up a steel staircase, and the whole building smelled of cedar and diesel.

Tony's office door was open.

He looked up from his desk, and for a moment he was glad to see me.

I saw it, and I hated that I saw it.

"I told you not to come here," he said, getting up. "Rule one."

"Rule one is nobody finds out. Nobody's here but a forklift."

His banker's box sat on the corner of the desk with the lid off.

I took out one folder and opened it to the first page.

Under the yellow highlights, in tiny block capitals, he had written dates along the margins.

The first date was six weeks old.

Beside it he'd written: Calloway. 6:10 PM. Her van, his Audi. Parked on level 2.

I turned the pages.

August 9, he'd written. Valeria and Brett, anniversary. R-Bar. Brett toasted her. L. held his hand under the table.

I looked up.

"You were there," I said.

"Yes."

"At my fifth anniversary. You and Lila were at that dinner."

"Yes."

"You knew."

"I knew," he said.

I heard the building's compressor kick on below us.

"Six weeks," I said. "I let him kiss me in the doorway, and I slept next to him, and I picked out his ties. You watched him raise a glass to me."