Chapter 4

Russell's spare work boots sat outside Apartment 3B.

I recognized the scrape I had put across the left toe years ago.

I texted Jolene before I knocked.

I'm at 86 Riverstone, Apartment 3B. Russell's truck is here. Call me in ten minutes.

The deadbolt slid back.

Lacey opened the door wearing my gray cashmere cardigan.

I had searched for it last month. Russell told me I must have left it at Northline.

Behind her, his travel mug stood beside the sink. His spare keys lay on the white counter. A framed photograph showed Russell and Lacey at the Petoskey wedding expo, his hand resting at the small of her back.

This was not one bad night.

He had left pieces of himself all over her home.

"Forty-eight thousand six hundred dollars," I said. "That wasn't for equipment."

Lacey pulled the cardigan closed. "Russell used his bonus to pay the rent."

"The money came from Northline with my name on it."

"He said the company owed him."

"And you believed him?"

Her eyes flicked toward my coat, where I had hidden the report.

"I believed he was taking care of us."

Us.

Lacey opened the cardigan.

Beneath it, her white shirt curved over a small, firm belly. A thin gold band circled her left ring finger.

My hand moved toward my own stomach before I stopped it.

Five years of negative tests. Five years of quiet drives home with Russell's hand resting on my knee.

Every time I said I was sorry, he held me and said, "You are my family. Nothing is missing."

Those words had kept me in our marriage every month I felt I had failed it. Beside Lacey's pregnant body, they became proof that Russell had learned exactly where to lie.

I stopped gripping the doorframe and looked at her.

Now another woman wore my sweater and carried the child he had promised we did not need.

"Fourteen weeks," Lacey said. "It's a boy."

I held the doorframe until the hallway stopped shifting.

"Does he know?"

"He came to the ultrasound Tuesday."

She touched the ring. Pride softened her voice despite herself.

"He said the divorce will be filed before the baby comes. Our son will have the Keane name."

Lacey once told me she had moved six times before finishing high school. I had fought for her raise because I understood why she wanted security.

Russell had offered her the safety she wanted with money he put under my name.

"When did it start?" I asked.

"After the Petoskey expo in May."

I had sent them.

I had fought to send Lacey to that expo with Russell. I had booked their separate rooms myself.

"You took that trip because I fought for you."

Lacey's chin lifted. "Russell said you didn't want to go."

"He asked me to stay home."

"He said your marriage had been over for months. He said you slept in the guest room."

"I slept there for the first time last night."

The certainty left her face.

I saw the lie reach her, and for one small moment, it hurt someone besides me.

"The week after Petoskey, he sat beside me at a doctor's appointment and told me we would keep trying," I said. "On our anniversary in June, he wrote that whatever came next, we would face it together."

Lacey rubbed the gold band with her thumb.

The band stopped moving when I mentioned our anniversary.

My phone rang. Jolene's name lit the screen exactly ten minutes after my message.

"I'm safe," I told her. "Stay on the line."

Lacey reached for the door.

I stepped back before she could shut it against my shoulder.

"He told me you had been trying for five years," she said. "He said he stayed because he was afraid you would fall apart."

She placed both hands over her stomach.

"He said he would leave after the doctor gave you bad news again."