Chapter 6: What a Son Doesn't Say Out Loud
We sat at a corner table in the resort's smaller breakfast room, away from the terrace and the water view.
Mark ordered eggs and toast and barely touched either.
I ordered coffee and fruit and watched him not eat.
"Say what you came to say," I told him.
He looked up.
"I don't know where to start."
"Start anywhere."
He turned his fork over in his hand.
Set it down.
"How long have you known that something was wrong?"
"With what?"
"With us.
Me and Amber."
I took a slow breath.
"A wife doesn't call her husband's mother the help in a hotel lobby because she's having a bad day, Mark.
That kind of cruelty takes practice."
He didn't argue.
That told me something important.
"I knew things were different," he said.
"I told myself it was stress.
The kids, work, the move last year.
I kept making excuses."
"For her or for yourself?"
His jaw tightened.
"Both."
A server refilled my coffee.
We waited until she was gone.
"She changed my phone password six months ago," he said quietly.
"She said it was because the kids kept getting into it.
But she knows my passcode and she checks my phone when she thinks I'm asleep." He paused.
"I've never checked hers."
I set my cup down.
"Last month," he continued, "I found a hotel receipt in her jacket pocket when I was taking it to the dry cleaner.
It was for a hotel in Savannah.
She'd told me she was visiting her college roommate in Charleston."
The breakfast room had filled slightly around us.
Families, couples.
The ordinary sounds of an ordinary morning.
"Did you confront her?" I asked.
"I put the receipt back."
"Why?"
He was quiet for a long moment.
"Because I was afraid of what she'd say."
I looked at my son — this man who had once argued so passionately at twelve years old that he was old enough to stay home alone, who had once cried for an hour when a stray dog he'd been feeding for a week didn't come back — and I felt the particular ache that comes from watching someone you love become smaller than they are.
"Mark." I kept my voice level.
"There is a man named Derek Calloway staying in this hotel.
He arrived two days ago.
He and Amber met privately in the east corridor yesterday, before we checked in."
Mark went very still.
"I have security footage," I said.
"And I have someone looking into him."
The fork was still on the table where he'd left it.
He didn't reach for it.
"She planned this," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"I don't know the full shape of it yet.
But I don't think it's a coincidence."
He pressed his hands flat on the table.
I watched his knuckles go white.
"What do I do?"
"Nothing yet.
You go back upstairs.
You have breakfast with your wife.
You behave exactly as you have been."
"You want me to pretend?"
"I want you to give me twenty-four hours." I met his eyes.
"Can you do that?"
He looked like a man standing at the edge of something he couldn't come back from once he stepped off it.
But he nodded.
"Good." I picked up my coffee.
"And Mark — don't tell her we spoke this morning."
He stood slowly.
Pushed in his chair.
Then he stopped behind it, hands resting on the back.
"Mom." His voice came out lower.
"I laughed at you yesterday.
In front of all those people."
"You did."
"I don't know how to—" He stopped.
Started again.
"I don't deserve for you to help me."
I looked at him.
"No.
But I'm your mother.
I'll help you anyway."
He left without another word.
I sat alone with my coffee for another few minutes.
Then my phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
*Back off, old woman.
You don't know what you're getting involved in.*
I read it twice.
Set the phone down beside my cup.
May you like
Picked up my spoon and finished the last of the fruit on my plate.
Then I forwarded the text to Gerald and wrote: *Add this to the file.*
