Chapter 3

The following afternoon, I saw her again.

This time, my son was not with her.

She walked alone into a movie theater downtown.

Before going inside, she stood near the entrance and checked her phone several times.

She was clearly waiting for someone.

My hands tightened around the steering wheel as anger slowly burned through me.

Yesterday, she had gone into a hotel with my son.

Today, she was meeting another man?

Fine.

I would see it for myself.

I would find out what else this woman was hiding from my son.

I parked in the shadows across from the movie theater.

The woman stood beneath a towering film poster near the entrance.

She had clearly made an effort with her appearance today.

Her long hair was swept up, and she wore a fitted dark dress that traced the lines of her body.

Every few seconds, she checked her phone, then looked toward the doors again.

I became more certain with every passing minute.

She was waiting for a man.

Anger slowly climbed through my chest.

Just yesterday, she had walked into a hotel with my eighteen-year-old son.

Now she was sneaking around behind his back to meet someone else.

I already knew what I would do.

The moment the man appeared, I would take pictures of them together.

Then I would put the proof in front of my son.

He needed to see for himself what kind of woman he had been so determined to defend.

A few minutes later, she smiled.

It was the first time I had ever seen that expression on her face.

It was nothing like the indulgent smile she had given my son the day before.

This was different.

This was the smile of a woman seeing the man she loved.

A strange heaviness settled in my chest.

Then a man stepped out through a side entrance.

She immediately went to meet him.

He took her hand as though he had done it a thousand times before.

Then he bent down and kissed her.

The blood in my body turned to ice.

That coat.

That silhouette.

Even the slight dip of his right shoulder when he walked.

There was no possible way I could mistake him.

I stared without blinking.

It felt as though I were watching from the other side of the world as the man slowly turned his face toward me.

It was my husband.

My phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor.

The woman who had entered a hotel with my eighteen-year-old son only yesterday was now standing outside a movie theater, kissing my husband.

And my husband—

was the first love she had left behind twenty years ago.

I picked up the phone from the passenger seat.

The screen had shattered.

A web of cracks ran across the photo, but they could not hide the image of my husband bending down to kiss Camille Rhodes.

The woman who had walked into a hotel with my eighteen-year-old son the day before was now nestled in my husband’s arms.

I sat frozen behind the wheel for a long time.

At first, I had believed an older woman was preying on a boy who had only just become an adult.

I thought Owen had simply been naive enough to mistake manipulation for love.

But now, it was clear that I was the only one who had been kept in the dark.

From the very beginning.

I did not storm into the theater.

Nor did I call anyone.

The moment I confronted them, Graham Whitmore would delete every record, Camille Rhodes would disappear, and Owen would help them invent another lie.

They had no idea I had seen everything.

That was the only advantage I had left.