Chapter 5
Grant's POV
After leaving the restaurant, Grant didn't go straight home.
Audrey had found out about Theo, yet she hadn't confronted him over the phone or shown up at the restaurant to make a scene.
She had simply revoked his access to the house and stopped responding altogether.
Her silence made him increasingly uneasy, and a suspicion began to form in his mind.
He drove to Elise's house.
Elise had just finished giving Theo a bath.
Dressed in dinosaur pajamas, the boy lay on the living room rug playing with a fire truck.
The moment he saw Grant enter, he scrambled to his feet.
"Dad, why are you here tonight?"
Grant stroked his hair but didn't answer.
Instead, he looked straight at Elise. "Did you contact Audrey?"
Elise paused in the middle of drying her hair. "Isn't today your anniversary?"
"Answer me."
"I only sent her a photo."
Grant snatched the phone she had left on the coffee table. The chat was still open.
The photo showed him walking from the house toward his car, carrying the anniversary gift he had prepared for Audrey.
Below it was the message Elise had sent Audrey:
"He's going to spend time with you now only because it's your anniversary. Until Sunday is over, he belongs to us."
Grant stared at those words, a vein throbbing hard at his temple.
"Why would you do this?"
Elise took the phone back from him. "Because I'm tired of hiding. Theo is already five. How much longer do you expect me to wait?"
"I never asked you to wait."
"You come here every Sunday. You eat with him, take him to school, and stay beside his bed when he's sick. You let him call you Dad, and now you're claiming you never promised us anything?"
Theo sat on the rug, staring at them in confusion.
Grant lowered his voice. "Don't talk about this in front of the child."
"Then you tell him." Elise's eyes reddened. "Tell him you aren't his father. Tell him you won't come back starting tomorrow."
Theo wrapped his arms tightly around Grant's legs.
"Dad, don't you want me anymore?"
Something seemed to lodge in Grant's throat.
For the past five years, whenever Theo looked at him that way, Grant remembered the final moment before Daniel disappeared beneath the waves.
His brother had pushed the life jacket toward him and allowed him to survive.
Elise knew that memory would make him give in.
She had been using it all along.
Before Grant could answer, his phone suddenly rang.
The property manager informed him that Audrey had temporarily restored his access to the house, but only for two hours.
She wanted him to remove his personal belongings before the deadline. After that, management would replace every lock.
Grant gripped the phone as the color slowly drained from his face.
Elise walked over to him. "You can stay here."
"This isn't my home."
He turned and headed for the door.
Theo cried out for him from behind. Grant's steps faltered for a moment, but in the end, he still pulled the door open.
When he returned to the marital home, the property staff were already waiting outside.
Nothing inside had been smashed, nor had Audrey left any other signs of her departure.
She had taken only her documents, work supplies, her mother's jewelry, and some clothes she had worn recently.
Two place settings remained neatly arranged on the dining table.
Grant went upstairs to the study and spotted the wedding ring immediately.
It lay on top of Theo's emergency contact form. Beside it were the child's drawing and the photos Audrey had taken through the window during the birthday party.
She had been standing outside yesterday.
Grant picked up the photos, his fingertips trembling uncontrollably.
In them, he held Theo in his arms while Elise stood behind them.
If no one had told him what he was looking at, even he would have mistaken them for a family of three.
A blank anniversary card also lay at the edge of the desk.
The cover read: To My Husband.
Grant called Audrey, but she didn't answer.
He contacted her friends, her studio, and the hotels where she usually stayed. Every one of them gave him the same answer.
Audrey didn't want to see him.
Then he opened the safe and discovered that the deed to the lakeside house her parents had left her was gone.
Just over an hour later, he stood outside the locked iron gates of the lakeside property. A light glowed on the second floor.
He pressed the intercom.
"Audrey, I know you're in there."
After a long silence, she finally answered. "Is that child yours?"
Grant tightened his grip on the wedding ring she had left behind.
"I don't know."
After another brief silence, she asked:
"Did you sleep with Elise?"