Betrayal Behind the Wheel novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Alert
At his eighth anniversary party, Gavin's car app pings from the garage, and he takes the camera card out of his wife's Tahoe and hears a man say Milly has his chin.
My phone buzzed against my chest just as my wife raised her glass.
Forty people stood in our living room, smiling at us.
It was our eighth anniversary, and Marissa had picked the dress, the caterer and the playlist.
"To Gavin," she said, "who still opens every door for me."
Everyone laughed and clinked glasses.
I slid my phone out of my jacket to silence it.
The screen showed the car app I had installed for Milly's safety.
"Cabin camera: new recording saved. White Tahoe, driveway."
The Tahoe was Marissa's, and it had been parked outside for two hours.
Nobody had been sent to it.
I looked up and found her watching my hand.
Her smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Work?" she asked.
"The dealership," I said. "Two minutes."
"Not tonight, baby."
"Two minutes."
I kissed her cheek and she turned her face so I got the corner of her mouth.
She smelled like champagne and the perfume I had bought her in March.
My mother caught my eye from the sofa.
Selma Stanbridge, sixty-two, silver hair, pearls, a cream blazer, had not moved in an hour.
She tilted her glass at me, a small, polite salute.
I went out the side door.
The driveway was cold and quiet, and the Tahoe sat under the maple tree.
I had never once checked that camera.
I had set it up so I could see Milly buckle herself in.
I opened the driver's door and the dome light came on.
The cabin smelled of cologne, and it was not mine.
A man's cologne, warm and woody, hung in the passenger seat.
On the floor mat lay a single earring, a small silver hoop.
Marissa had not worn hoops in years.
I pulled the camera from its bracket above the mirror and found the memory card slot.
My hands were steady, which surprised me.
I popped the card out and held it in my palm.
It was the size of a thumbnail.
Behind me the party noise rose and fell through the wall of the house.
Someone laughed, and it might have been my wife.
I sat down in the driver's seat and closed the door.
My phone could read the card through the app, so I plugged the cable into the console.
The newest clip was dated four days ago, a Monday.
It was ten minutes long.
I pressed play.
The picture was grainy and green with night.
The Tahoe was parked somewhere dark, with a building behind it and a sign I could not read.
Marissa sat behind the wheel in a coat I had never seen.
Her hair was down, the way she wore it when she was happy.
A man sat in the passenger seat, but the camera caught only his shoulder and the back of his head.
"You can't keep doing this," Marissa said.
Her voice was low and warm.
It was the voice she used when Milly had a bad dream.
"I know," the man said.
"I came because you texted."
"I always text."
She laughed and put her palm flat against his chest.
He covered her hand with his.
I watched my wife lean across the console and kiss another man.
It was not a quick kiss.
It was a kiss with years in it.
I did not move.
I did not breathe, either, and I only noticed when my lungs began to ache.
Her hand slid up into his hair.
His hand went to her jaw, and I saw a steel watch glint on his wrist.
"Milly had her recital rehearsal," Marissa said against his mouth.
"Gavin took her. He sat in the front row for two hours with a little tin dinosaur in his lap."
The man laughed softly.
"He's a good dad."
"He's an excellent dad," she said. "That's why it works."
Something cold and small turned over in my chest.
"Look at her picture," the man said.
Marissa held up her phone.
I could see my daughter's face on the screen, a gap in her front teeth, braids coming loose.
"She has my chin, Mari," the man said.
His voice dropped, almost tender.
"Seven years of this, and she has my chin."
"Don't," Marissa whispered.
"Mother will be so pleased."
The clip ran on, but I had stopped hearing it.
I sat in my wife's car in my own driveway and stared at my daughter's picture on a stolen screen.
Behind me, through the house wall, someone started to sing Happy Anniversary.
The song was for us.
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