Chapter 4

Dana scheduled our meeting for ten Monday morning.

I arrived early, but Mark was already there.

He sat at a table in the back of the coffee shop and stood as soon as he saw me.

“Dana called me. The two of you don’t need to meet.”

“Why not?”

“She hasn’t been doing well. You can’t take everything she says as fact, and you can’t turn a private matter into an interrogation.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down. “You made Nora hide where you were. I don’t need Dana to prove that.”

Mark lowered his voice. “Those arrangements were meant to avoid arguments. You’re combining two separate issues.”

“Then we’ll wait for her and decide which parts are relevant.”

The door opened.

Dana stopped when she saw Mark.

“I told you not to come.”

“I wasn’t going to let you face her alone.” Mark walked toward her. “She’s using Nora—”

“Sit down,” Dana cut in. “Since you’re here, you can listen while we establish the timeline.”

I started with the simplest question.

“What did he tell you about our marriage?”

Dana glanced at Mark. “He said you separated more than a year ago. You still lived in the same house for Nora, but you had separate lives and were both free to see other people.”

“That arrangement was never mentioned to me.”

Mark jumped in. “Our marriage has been in trouble for a long time. You can’t pretend everything was fine just because I never used the word separated.”

I didn’t argue about whether we had been happy during the past year.

Problems in a marriage did not make an imaginary separation real.

“When did your relationship start?” I asked Dana.

“March. We met in February and started dating the next month.”

April was the first time Mark took Nora to Dana’s apartment.

I asked whether Dana knew the weekends at the lake were lies.

“I knew Nora couldn’t tell you where we were,” she said. “Mark told me you couldn’t accept the separation and would use Nora to punish him if you found out. He said Nora understood. She just didn’t like conflict.”

Mark turned toward her. “I never said she understood our relationship.”

“You said she knew what to tell Evelyn.”

“That doesn’t mean I made her lie.”

They began arguing over his exact words. Mark kept narrowing his responsibility. Dana insisted he had assured her that I knew our marriage was over.

Arguing over which woman he had deceived more would only bury the real question.

“Dana, did you ever hear me say I knew about your relationship?”

“No.”

“Then why did you believe him?”

She held my gaze. “Because believing him was easier for me. I noticed things that didn’t add up, and I accepted his explanations anyway.”

Mark pushed his chair back. “She’s only saying that now because she wants to put all the blame on me.”

Dana ignored him.

She took out her phone and opened a message thread that went back several months.

“Before I met Nora, I asked Mark if bringing his daughter to my apartment would cause problems.”

She placed the phone on the table.

“His answer is right here.”

Mark reached for it, but Dana moved first. She slid the phone across the table to me.

The screen was still lit. The first message waited at the top.

“If you want to know who decided Nora would be our cover,” Dana said, “read the first message Mark sent me.”