A Stranger Told Me My Husband Cheated, So We Cheated Back novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Carbonara

Jo lets Trevor cry at the kitchen table, goes through his gym bag and finds her dead father's money in another woman's rent.

The carbonara was perfect.

Trevor had set the table with the good plates and lit two candles, and he had changed into the gray sweater I liked.

He stood up when I came through the kitchen door.

"Jo."

His eyes were red, and I wondered how long he had worked on them.

"Sit down, Trevor."

He sat.

I took the chair across from him and folded my hands on the table, the way I do with a patient who is about to hear the word "root canal."

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm sick about it. It was eight weeks, Jo. Eight weeks of the stupidest thing I've ever done."

It had been eight months.

Nolan had told me so in the lobby, in a flat voice, with the dates.

I nodded.

"Whose idea was it?"

"Hers. She's been after me since the ribbon cutting. I should've said no, I know I should've." He reached across the table. "It's over. She was nothing. I ended it the second you walked out."

"You ended it the second I walked out," I said.

"I swear on my life."

His hand was warm over mine.

It smelled faintly of a perfume that wasn't mine.

I did not pull away.

It was the hardest thing I'd done all day, harder than dropping the ring.

"I need time," I said.

"Take all the time you want." His face crumpled with relief, which was how I knew I'd said the right thing. "Do you want to put the ring back on? Bianca said she'd send it."

"It's being cleaned."

"Okay. Okay. Whatever you need."

"I'll sleep in the guest room tonight."

"Of course," he said, and he said it fast.

He ate the whole plate while I pushed noodles around mine.

At nine he said he'd shower and let me think.

I waited until the water ran.

His gym bag sat on the bench by the front door, where it had sat every night for eight years.

I had never opened it.

That was the first thing I understood, standing there with the zipper in my fingers.

In four years, I hadn't asked him one question.

He'd said that to Bianca like a compliment.

Inside were a towel, a protein bar, a charger and a folded stack of papers held with a binder clip.

The top page was a lease.

22 Fell Street, Unit 3.

Tenant: Trevor Colfax.

Four thousand two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and the start date was eight months ago.

Under the lease were bank slips, three of them.

Each one had the same account name printed at the top in small gray letters.

Estate of Larrabee.

My father's name.

I put my hand flat on the bench to hold myself up.

One slip was for ninety thousand dollars.

One was for sixty.

The third one was for thirty-four, the exact sum of eight months of rent on a one-bedroom on Fell Street.

I took pictures of every page with my phone, then clipped them back together in the same order and zipped the bag.

Upstairs the water shut off.

I got to the guest room before the bathroom door opened, and I shut myself in.

Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and let myself shake for a moment.

My phone lit up.

It was a text from a number I didn't know.

"This is Nolan. Are you safe?"

I typed, "Eating carbonara."

He wrote back almost at once.

"Is it good?"

"It's perfect. That's the problem."

I watched the three dots appear and disappear twice.

"Sleep," he wrote. "In the morning you start being a fool."

I looked at my wrist.

There was nothing there, no mark and no bruise.

But I could still feel the place where his thumb had been, the little steady weight of it on my pulse.

It was a stupid thing to be thinking about.

I turned the light off and thought about it anyway.

The door opened without a knock.

Trevor stood in the hall in his towel, his hair wet and his face tender.

"I just wanted to say goodnight," he said. "And I'll pick up your clinic results Monday, like always. You don't need to go near that place. I'll handle it."

"Thank you," I said.

I meant to sound grateful.

I think it worked.

He shut the door softly, and I heard him go down the hall humming.

My phone buzzed again.

It was an unknown number, and the message had no hello.

"Coffee. Just us girls. Pepper's on Thames Street, ten tomorrow. Come alone. B."

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