Chapter 2

Two weeks.

Fourteen days of pasta dinners and quiet mornings and watching him scroll through his phone at the table while I refilled his coffee. Fourteen days of being invisible on purpose.

I was good at invisible. I'd had three years of practice.

But this time, invisible had a job to do.

His gym bag lived in the closet by the door. He never locked it. Why would he? I was just the furniture. On a Tuesday morning, while he was in the shower, I unzipped the front pocket and found it — a second phone, cheap prepaid, the screen lit up with a message from a contact saved as *J*. Three heart emojis and an ultrasound photo.

I photographed it. Put everything back exactly as it was.

The joint bank statements took longer. I waited until he had a Saturday golf game, then sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and two hours of silence. The $420,000 transfer wasn't even hidden well — listed under a property LLC with Finn's initials buried in the name. A luxury condo in South Lake Union. I pulled the deed records online. Jenna Moreno. Signed six months ago.

I printed everything.

The credit card charges told the rest of the story. Tiffany on a Wednesday. Cartier — baby bracelets, based on the receipt description — the following week. A Michelin-star restaurant on the waterfront, table for two, a bottle of Champagne that cost more than my monthly grocery budget. I printed those too. Labeled each page with a date and a source. Slid them into a manila folder I kept tucked beneath a stack of old sketchbooks in the closet.

He never went near my sketchbooks.

He never went near anything that was truly mine.

---

He stopped pretending around week two.

He texted at dinner now, phone flat on the table beside his plate, the screen lighting up every few minutes. He stopped making excuses for the late nights. Three in a row, mid-week — *at the office, big deadline, don't wait up.* I didn't wait up. I sat in the dark living room and added the dates to my timeline.

Then one evening he poured himself a scotch, leaned against the counter, and looked at me the way you look at something that disappointed you a long time ago and you've simply made your peace with it.

'You know,' he said, swirling his glass, 'if you'd been able to give me a family, maybe things would've been different.'

The words landed. I felt them land. But beneath the sting was something else — something almost like dark laughter pressing against the back of my throat. Because I knew what he didn't. I knew about the fertility clinic waiting room, the doctor's careful face, the report that said the problem was his. I knew about the quiet conversation I'd had alone with that doctor afterward. *Change it.* I'd told myself it was love. I'd told myself I was protecting him.

Finn Carpenter was completely, irreversibly sterile.

And the only reason his file said otherwise was because I'd asked someone to lie for him.

The irony was so clean, so complete, that it could have been a painting. I almost smiled.

Instead, I said, 'Dinner's in the oven,' and walked away.

---

Friday. He came home early, tie loosened, that particular glow he got when something at work went his way.

'They're announcing promotions next month,' he said, dropping his keys on the counter. 'VP of Operations. Mine to lose at this point.' He opened the fridge, helped himself to a beer. 'We should celebrate this weekend. Maybe the place on the Sound.'

*We.* Like there was still a we. Like I was still a prop he could schedule.

I dried my hands on the dish towel. Then I turned around and set the folder on the kitchen table.

He looked at it. Then at me.

'What's this?'

I didn't answer. I watched him open it.

The photograph was on top — Finn and Jenna in the hospital corridor, his hand on her belly, her face turned up toward his. Below it, the bank transfer. The condo deed. The credit card receipts in chronological order. The affair mapped out like a project plan, clean and complete. At the bottom, the divorce petition, already signed by me.

His face moved fast. Shock first — a genuine flicker, like he'd forgotten I had a brain. Then something hardened.

He slammed his palm on the table. The folder jumped. 'You've been *spying* on me?'

'I've been documenting,' I said.

'This is — you're unbelievable.' His voice cracked upward. 'You drove me to this, Aria. You know that? A man wants a family. A real one. And you couldn't even—'

'Finn.' My voice was very quiet. Very steady. 'Your lawyer will hear from mine.'

I picked up my wine glass.

He was still talking — *cold, barren, ungrateful, you never*— but his voice was already fading, the way sound fades when you walk into another room and close the door behind you.

I walked out of the kitchen.

I didn't look back.