Chapter 3: What She Carried in That Photograph
Her name was Paula.
She said it quietly, like she had rehearsed being calm.
Like she had practiced not crying in front of strangers.
"I was his wife," she said.
"Three years ago.
We were married for eleven months."
The shouting from the house was getting louder.
Derek's voice.
Brenda's voice.
The sound of the back door being yanked open again.
"We need to move," Paula said.
I didn't argue.
I didn't know her.
But she was holding a photograph of my husband with another woman and a child, and that was enough.
I followed her through the side gate, down the narrow service alley behind the property, and into a grey sedan parked at the curb with the engine already running.
She pulled away before I had my door fully closed.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Somewhere he won't think to look for you in the next twenty minutes." She checked the mirror.
"After that, wherever you want."
I looked down at the photograph still in my hand.
The woman in it was younger than me.
Dark hair.
A wide smile.
The child — a boy, maybe three years old — was sitting on Derek's shoulders.
Derek was laughing.
I had never seen him laugh like that.
Open.
Unguarded.
"Who is she?" I asked.
"Her name is Renata.
She was before me." Paula's hands were steady on the wheel.
"Derek has a pattern, Chloe.
He finds women with money, or women with something he needs.
He marries them.
He empties the account.
Then he makes their life so unbearable they either leave quietly or get so confused they don't know which way is up."
"The joint account," I said.
"Yes."
"He moved $312,000 this morning."
Paula's jaw tightened.
"That's more than he took from me.
He's getting bolder."
I stared at the photograph.
"And the child?"
"His son.
With Renata.
Derek has never paid a cent toward him." She stopped at a red light and finally looked at me directly.
"Renata tried to report the financial fraud two years ago.
The case went nowhere.
Derek had a very good lawyer and a very convincing story about a mutual agreement."
"What kind of lawyer?"
"The kind his mother pays for."
The light changed.
I looked out the window at the ordinary Sunday morning passing by — a man walking a dog, a woman pushing a stroller, a coffee shop with a line out the door.
None of them knew.
None of them could possibly know what the last fourteen hours had contained.
"Why are you here?" I asked.
"Why did you come to the wedding?"
Paula was quiet for a moment.
"Because I found out three days ago that he was doing it again.
A friend of a friend.
I didn't know your name until I saw the announcement." She paused.
"I almost didn't come.
I told myself it wasn't my business anymore.
That I'd done enough damage to myself trying to fight him the first time."
"But you came anyway."
"I came anyway."
I looked back down at the photograph.
The boy on Derek's shoulders.
Renata's wide, trusting smile.
"How many?" I asked.
"How many women?"
Paula didn't answer immediately.
She turned onto a quieter street and pulled into the parking lot of a chain hotel — the kind with an anonymous lobby and no questions asked.
She cut the engine.
"That's what I need to show you," she said.
"I have a folder.
Documents.
Dates.
Names." She reached into the back seat and lifted a manila envelope onto her lap.
"Chloe, I don't think you and I are the only ones."
She set the envelope on the console between us.
I put my hand on it.
I didn't open it yet.
My phone buzzed.
Derek's name on the screen.
May you like
I turned it face-down on my knee.
"Show me everything," I said.
