Chapter 4 - THE OTHER VERSION
Reid got home after the children had gone to bed Saturday. I was at the kitchen table, where the twins' aquarium postcards lay beside a grocery list.
“I can explain the tour,” he said.
“Then start with Oregon.”
He looked toward the hallway. “Are they asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Beth misunderstood something I said about your mother's old address.”
My mother had never lived in Oregon. Reid knew that as well as I did.
“I told you the children saw you,” I said. “You've had all afternoon to decide whether to tell me the truth.”
“She's someone I met through work. I was trying to do a nice thing for her kid.”
I showed him the charge from three weeks ago. He went quiet long enough to read it, then said he'd meant to surprise our twins with a second tour after their school year started.
“The tour has three places,” I said. “There are four people in this house.”
He asked whether I'd gone through his accounts. When I reminded him it was our shared credit card, he accused me of making a problem out of a children's outing. I asked him to sleep somewhere else that night so we could speak without our children hearing us. He agreed, though he made sure I heard the word “unreasonable” as he took his overnight bag.
On Sunday, Beth and I met at a coffee shop halfway between our neighborhoods. My mother had the twins for two hours. Beth's daughter was spending the morning with her grandmother.
Beth brought her phone and an envelope from the aquarium. Neither of us had asked the other to bring proof, but we had both spent the night listening to Reid ask us to trust him.
She told me they'd been dating for seven months. They'd met at a fundraiser for a neighborhood food pantry; Reid had been there through a local business group. Beth wasn't part of his company. She didn't have a contract for him to service, and he hadn't taken her to the aquarium as a client.
“I asked if he was married before I agreed to dinner,” she said. “He told me the marriage was over. You were finishing paperwork because of the house.”
Then she showed me a message from January.
Marin took the twins to Oregon to be close to her family. I stayed for work. It's hard being far from the kids, but at least they're settled.
I remembered that January. Mae had had the flu. Reid had slept on the floor of her room because she kept calling for water. On the same day he wrote to Beth that he hadn't seen his children in six weeks, I'd sent him a photograph of both of them making a blanket fort in our living room.
Beth scrolled to another exchange. Reid had canceled dinner with her one Sunday because he was supposedly flying to see the twins. He'd actually stayed home to build a bird feeder with Miles. She had called that loving fatherhood. I'd called it a good weekend.
We couldn't fit seven months of lies onto one table, but the pattern became clear. When he was with us, he told Beth he was visiting his faraway children or tied up with work. When he was with Beth, he told me he had a client meeting, a service issue, or a late drive home.
Beth had asked Reid to come to the aquarium because Sophie had been reading about sharks. She'd expected to buy two ordinary tickets and spend a few hours there. He insisted on the private tour, promising to take the day off for both of them. Sophie had laid out her yellow sweater the night before. Until Saturday afternoon, Beth had believed this was the first time Reid had chosen a child over work. I couldn't tell her that my children had believed the same thing that morning.
“I never came to your house,” Beth said. “He told me you were selling it and didn't want strangers around the children's things. I thought respecting that was the right thing to do.”
I believed her. I could hear how carefully he'd chosen the lie: it made her compassion useful to him.
Beth slid the aquarium envelope across the table. Inside was a glossy picture of Reid crouching between her and Sophie. Sophie was grinning at the camera. The booking confirmation named all three VIP guests, recorded a $648 payment three weeks earlier, and showed the last four digits of our joint card.
“You can keep a copy of the receipt,” Beth said. “I'll send you the original email. I don't want Sophie's photograph passed around.”
“It won't be.”
For a while we drank our coffee without speaking. I thought about Miles shouting through the shark tank. Beth thought about the eight-year-old at home who had trusted the man holding her hand.
“I need to tell you something else,” she said at last. “I thought he was planning to start over with us.”
I looked up.
May you like
“Reid and I signed an application for an apartment together. He said the deposit was handled.” Beth folded her hands around her cup. “We're supposed to pick up the keys this Friday.”
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