Chapter 3: The Name on the Last Page
The name was Dana Holt.
My closest friend for eleven years.
Dana, who had a key to our house for emergencies.
Who had sat at our kitchen table for birthday dinners and Thanksgiving leftovers and the long, wine-slow evenings after Eli went to bed.
Who had held my hand in the hospital waiting room when Eli was born six weeks early and Sawyer was stuck on a delayed flight from Denver.
I set the notebook down very carefully, the way you set something down when your hands have stopped working properly.
"How do you know this name?" I asked.
"I heard Dad say it." Eli kept his eyes on the table.
"On the phone.
In the garage.
He said, 'Dana understands what you don't.' I didn't know what it meant then."
"When was this?"
"October eleventh.
I wrote it down."
I looked at the entry again.
*Oct 11 — Dad on phone in garage.
Said "she can't know." Didn't see me.*
He had written *she can't know.* He hadn't written the name because he hadn't known it yet.
He'd found it later.
"How did you find out it was Dana?"
Eli was quiet for a moment.
"Her scarf," he said finally.
"The orange one.
She left it here in September.
You put it on the hook by the back door and said you'd give it back next time you saw her." He paused.
"I saw the same scarf in Dad's car.
In October.
Folded on the passenger seat."
The orange scarf.
I knew the one.
Silk, with a thin brown border.
Dana had worn it to Eli's school concert in the spring.
"You didn't tell me."
"I didn't want to be wrong." He looked up.
"I kept watching.
To make sure."
My son had spent two months making sure.
I stood up from the island.
Walked to the window above the sink.
The backyard was gray and still, the oak tree stripped down to its branches.
"Mom."
"Give me a second."
"Okay."
I pressed my fingers against the edge of the counter.
Dana had been in this house four days ago.
She'd brought soup because I'd mentioned I wasn't sleeping well.
She'd sat in the chair across from me and asked if everything was all right between Sawyer and me, and I had said yes, just tired, just the season, and she had nodded with her eyes soft and her hands folded in her lap and she had said, *You know you can always talk to me.*
I turned back around.
"Eli, I need you to take the notebook to school with you today."
He blinked.
"Why?"
"Because your father cannot find it here.
Put it in your backpack.
The inside zipper pocket.
Don't show anyone."
He picked it up without arguing.
"Are you going to be okay?" he asked.
The question was so careful.
So measured.
The kind of question a child asks when they already know the answer might be no and they are asking anyway because they need to hear something true.
"I'm going to figure this out," I said.
"That's different from okay, but it's real."
He nodded.
He zipped the notebook into his backpack.
Sawyer's car was already gone from the driveway.
I watched the school bus take Eli at 7:52.
Then I sat down at the kitchen island with my phone and Rebecca Lane's photograph still open on the screen.
The brunette in the restaurant was not Dana.
That meant there were two of them.
Or the brunette was someone I hadn't identified yet, and Dana was something else entirely — a confidante, a cover, a person who had been feeding Sawyer information about my state of mind while I trusted her with it.
I called Rebecca.
She picked up on the second ring.
"Claire."
"How long have you known?"
A pause.
"I saw them three weeks ago," she said.
"I almost didn't send it.
I kept telling myself it might not be what it looked like."
"It was what it looked like."
"I know.
I'm sorry."
"The woman in the photograph — do you know who she is?"
Another pause.
Longer.
"Her name is Vanessa Pruitt," Rebecca said.
"She's a junior associate at Sawyer's firm.
She started about eight months ago."
Eight months.
I did the math without meaning to.
Eight months ago, Sawyer had started working late on Tuesdays.
He'd bought a new gym bag and said he was trying to get back into a routine.
He'd been quieter at dinner but more attentive on weekends, the way people are when they're managing guilt in careful portions.
"Does anyone else know?" I asked.
"I think a few people at the firm have noticed.
But Claire — there's something else."
I waited.
"I heard from someone at the foundation," Rebecca said slowly, "that Sawyer requested a change to the gala seating arrangement this week.
He moved your table.
You and Eli are now at table twelve, near the back."
The room felt very quiet.
"He was originally at the head table," I said.
"He still is," Rebecca said.
"He just moved you."
I set my phone face-down on the counter.
Tomorrow night, at the Stanton Children's Foundation gala, my husband had arranged for me to sit at the back of the room while he walked in with another woman.
May you like
He had planned it.
He had moved the chairs himself.
