Gregory stepped away from me without noticing that I had stopped breathing normally. He loosened his tie, dropped his keys onto the dresser, and began talking about traffic. The scent lingered after he moved, faint but unmistakable. Coconut beneath something warm and sweet. The same fragrance that had followed the young woman when she turned away from me near the bakery counter.
“How was work?” he asked.
I watched him carefully.
“Tiring.”
“You look wiped out.”
“I am.”
He unbuttoned his cuffs. “I can cook tonight.”
Normally I would have thanked him. Instead I noticed everything. His shirt was slightly creased near the shoulder. One sleeve bore a tiny smear I could not identify. His expression seemed normal, but normal suddenly required examination.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Meetings. A client review. Nothing exciting.”
No mention of a young woman.
No mention that someone who had been in our bedroom had apparently visited him.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Toby told me something interesting while we were shopping.”
Gregory’s fingers stopped at his left cuff.
Only briefly.
Had I blinked, I might have missed it.
Then he looked at me. “What?”
“He recognized someone.”
Gregory gave a small smile. “He recognizes half the city lately.”
“This person was a young woman.”
The smile remained.
His eyes did not.
“Someone from school?”
“No.”
He waited.
“Toby says she has been here.”
Gregory’s posture changed so subtly that another person might not have noticed. His shoulders became rigid.
“At the house?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“While I’m working.”
Silence stretched between us.
Then he said, “Toby tells stories.”
I tilted my head. “Does he?”
“He’s five.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“What question?”
“Whether a young woman has been coming into our house while I’m at the hospital.”
Gregory looked toward the hallway.
“Where is Toby?”
“Downstairs.”
He rubbed his thumb along his wedding band.
I had seen him do that when calculating something difficult.
I continued before he could control the conversation.
“He also told me she goes into our bedroom.”
Gregory exhaled through his nose.
“Claire—”
It was the first time he had used my name since coming upstairs, and hearing it made the space between us feel formal.
“What?”
“Kids misunderstand things.”
“So there is something to misunderstand?”
He looked at me sharply.
I stood and walked toward the dresser.
His gaze followed.
Then he saw the jewelry box.
The change in his face was immediate.
Color left his cheeks.
Not slowly. Not ambiguously.
One second Gregory looked irritated and guarded; the next he looked as though somebody had told him the house was burning.
I picked up the box.
“Something is missing.”
He stared at the empty velvet compartment.
“What?”
I almost laughed at the uselessness of the question. “You know exactly what.”
He did not deny it.
That frightened me more than denial would have.
“I saw the woman today.”
His gaze snapped to mine.
“Where?”
The urgency startled me.
“At the grocery store.”
“What part?”
“The bakery.”
“Was Toby with you?”
I stared at him.
“Yes.”
“Did she see him?”
“What difference does that make?”
“Claire. Did she see Toby?”
“She looked directly at him.”
Gregory reached immediately for his phone.
I moved between him and the doorway.
“No.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Move.”
“You are going to answer me.”
“I need to make a call.”
“To her?”
He said nothing.
A hot, focused anger replaced my confusion.
“Who is she?”
Gregory looked past me toward the stairs.
“Did you speak to her?”
“I tried.”
“What did you say?”
“Why are you interrogating me?”
His jaw tightened. “Because this matters.”
“So does finding another woman wearing jewelry you gave me for our anniversary.”
That stopped him.
“She had the sapphire necklace.”
For several seconds he did not move.
Then he whispered, “No.”
“Yes.”
“You’re certain?”
“I would recognize it.”
“Maybe it looked similar.”
“It is gone from the box, Gregory.”
He turned toward the dresser again.
His expression was wrong.
I had expected shame, perhaps panic at being caught, maybe anger from a man cornered by his own lie.
What I saw looked like fear.
“Where did she go?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
“Did she follow you?”
“What?”
“Home.”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
His questions were becoming more alarming than the suspected affair.
“Who is she?”
Instead of answering, Gregory walked toward the window and looked down at the driveway.
I followed him.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking.”
“For what?”
He pulled the curtain aside and scanned the street.
“Gregory.”
He released it.
“Lock the front door.”
I stared at him.
“You cannot possibly think giving me orders is going to work right now.”
“Please.”
“No.”
He came closer and lowered his voice. “Claire, lock the door.”
“You’re frightening me.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me why.”
His eyes shifted toward the hallway again.
“Toby shouldn’t hear this.”
My anger sharpened. “Toby already knows enough to recognize a woman who enters our bedroom when I’m gone.”
Gregory pressed a hand against his forehead.
“You think I’m sleeping with her.”
“You smell like her perfume.”
His hand dropped.
“What?”
“She was wearing coconut and vanilla perfume. You came home smelling exactly the same.”
He brought his sleeve toward his face.
I watched recognition appear.
“Oh, God.”
“What?”
“She hugged me.”
The simplicity of the statement made me furious.
“You expect me to believe that improves this?”
“No.”
“When?”
“Today.”
“Where?”
“My office.”
The room seemed suddenly smaller.
“She visited you today.”
“Yes.”
“And then she went to the grocery store wearing my necklace.”
“I didn’t know she had it.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Try using her name.”
“Her name is Lila.”
It was the first concrete thing he had given me.
“Lila what?”
“I’m not sure her last name is real.”
I stared at him.
“You know someone well enough to hug her and let her into our bedroom, yet you don’t know whether she gave you her real surname.”
“I did not let her into the house.”
“Toby says you were here with her.”
“I was.”
“That sounds exactly like letting her in.”
“She was already inside when I found her.”
The anger stalled.
“What?”
Gregory sat on the bed.
“I came home unexpectedly several months ago. She was upstairs.”
“In this bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“And you never thought I should know?”
“I thought about telling you every day.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“I know.”
“Did you call the police?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because when I caught her, she knew things.”
I waited.
Gregory rubbed both hands over his face.
“She knew your name. She knew mine. She knew about Toby. She knew details about this house that no ordinary burglar could know.”
“Like what?”
“She knew where your mother’s letter was.”
I frowned.
“My mother’s letter?”
“The handwritten one you keep with the old photographs.”
My anger gave way to unease.
The letter had no financial value. My mother had written it years earlier, shortly before an operation, during a period when both of us had been too frightened to discuss what might happen. I kept it because her handwriting still made me hear her voice.
“Why would a burglar care about that?”
“That was my question.”
Gregory looked toward the jewelry case.
“Things have gone missing before.”
My stomach tightened.
“What things?”
“Small things.”
“Since when?”
“Months.”
“And you said nothing.”
“I wasn’t certain at first.”
“Name them.”
He began counting on his fingers.
“An old picture from the hallway cabinet. One of the spare house keys. Your mother’s letter.”
I stared at him.
“The spare key disappeared?”
“It came back.”
“What do you mean, came back?”
“I found it later in a kitchen drawer.”
“Where it belonged?”
“No.”
“How did you know I hadn’t moved it?”
“I didn’t.”
He stood and began pacing.
“That’s why I didn’t react at first. Everybody misplaces things. Then the photograph disappeared and turned up behind some books in my office. I thought Toby might be moving things.”
“Toby doesn’t hide photographs in your office.”
“I know that now.”
“Because you caught Lila.”
“Yes.”
I went to the bedroom door and shut it.
The click sounded louder than expected.
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
Gregory hesitated.
I folded my arms.
“You have used up your right to decide what I can handle.”
He nodded once.
“It was about three months ago. I had a meeting canceled, so I came home before lunch. When I walked in, I thought I heard someone upstairs.”
“Why didn’t the alarm go off?”
“It wasn’t armed.”
“It should have been.”
“I know.”
“You went upstairs?”
“Yes.”
“And found her here.”
“Standing by your dresser.”
“Going through my jewelry?”
“No. She was holding a photograph.”
“Which photograph?”
“The one of you as a child with your mother.”
A strange pressure settled behind my ribs.
“What did she say?”
“At first, nothing.”
“Did she try to run?”
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I demanded to know who she was.”
“And?”
“She asked me whether you were really my wife.”
I felt suddenly cold.
“What?”
“She already knew the answer. At least I think she did.”
“What else?”
“She asked whether your mother was still alive.”
I stepped backward.
There was no reasonable explanation for a stranger breaking into my home and asking questions about my family.
“What did you tell her?”
“That she needed to leave.”
“And then?”
“She started crying.”
“Crying.”
Gregory nodded.
“She looked terrified. Not of me. More like she had finally reached somewhere she had been searching for and didn’t know what to do next.”
“You believed her?”
“I didn’t know what to believe.”
“Yet you didn’t call the police.”
“She asked for five minutes.”
“And you gave them to her.”
“Yes.”
I laughed once, without humor. “Remarkable judgment.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
“She told me there was something wrong with the story she had been given about her family.”
I stared at him.
“What family?”
“She wouldn’t explain fully.”
“Convenient.”
“That’s why I kept trying to get answers.”
“By letting her return?”
“No. She returned whether I agreed or not.”
“What does that mean?”
Gregory looked toward the window.
“She knew how to get into this house.”
A faint noise downstairs made both of us pause. Toby was laughing at his cartoon.
I lowered my voice.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“We changed the locks two years ago.”
“I know.”
“Did she have a key?”
“Maybe.”
“The missing spare key.”
“That crossed my mind.”
“But you said it came back.”
“It did.”
“After she could have copied it.”
Gregory gave a grim nod.
For the first time since the bakery, the possibility of infidelity seemed almost comforting compared with the alternatives forming in my head.
“Why did Toby see her?”
“The second time I found her, he came upstairs.”
“And you told him what?”
“That she was helping me find something.”
“What?”
“I didn’t specify.”
“So when he told me she searches through our bedroom, he was telling the truth.”
“Yes.”
I turned away.
My pulse beat hard in my neck.
“What happened at your office today?”
Gregory became still.
“She appeared around lunchtime.”
“How did she know where you worked?”
“She has known for months.”
“And she hugged you.”
“At the end.”
“Why?”
“She said she was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“To tell me why she came here.”
I looked at him.
“And did she?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“She got a phone call.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. She looked at the screen, changed completely, and left.”
“You didn’t follow her?”
“I tried. By the time I got downstairs she was gone.”
“And somehow, afterward, she ended up in the same grocery store as Toby and me.”
Gregory’s face tightened.
“That’s what scares me.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think it was accidental.”
Something in the way he said it made my skin prickle.
He walked to the closet.
“What are you doing?”
“There is something else you need to see.”
He reached above a row of folded blankets and brought down an old cardboard storage box.
I had never seen it before.
He carried it to the bed.
Dust marked the lid.
“How long has that been there?”
“A few months.”
“You hid something in our bedroom while a stranger was breaking into our house?”
“I didn’t know where else to keep it.”
I almost told him that explanation was absurd, but then he opened the box.
Inside were photographs.
Dozens.
Some were faded at the edges. Others had the washed-out colors of pictures taken decades earlier. A few were black and white.
I lifted the first.
Gregory stood beside a woman I did not recognize.
He could not have been older than twelve.
I picked up another.
The same woman.
Again.
Again.
In every photograph Gregory was younger than the man I knew, and the woman beside him had a face that seemed to change from joy to exhaustion depending on the year.
“Who is she?”
Gregory did not answer immediately.
Then I found a photograph that made the question irrelevant.
The woman was standing outside a house, her hair moving across her face in the wind.
Around her neck hung a teardrop sapphire bordered with tiny diamonds.
The same design as my anniversary necklace.
The same design Lila had been wearing that afternoon.
I turned the photograph over.
A date had been written on the back.
It was taken years before Gregory and I had even met.
I looked up.
“You told me my necklace was custom-made.”
“It was.”
“Then explain this.”
Gregory sat beside me.
“The design wasn’t mine.”
I held up the photograph.
“Whose was it?”
His eyes stayed on the woman.
“Hers.”
I waited.
Finally I asked, “Who is she?”
Gregory swallowed.
“My mother.”
The photograph nearly slipped from my hand.
Gregory had told me his mother died when he was young.
And in that instant I knew the stranger entering my house was connected to a lie much older than our marriage.
Click Here to continue read next: PART3: The Photographs My Husband Hid Above Our Closet Revealed Why My Anniversary Gift Had Never Truly Been Designed for Me
My Son Recognized a Woman I Had Never Met, and the Jewelry at Her Throat Made His Impossible Story Suddenly Real
Part 2 of 12
