"Ellie, I know these past few days have been hard on you. I'll make it up to you. I promise."
I smiled and said nothing.
After he left, I found a receipt in the walk-in closet. A crumpled slip from the store.
Imported toys. Children's vitamins. Dinosaur crackers.
In the bottom drawer of his study desk, I found the statements for his second bank account.
A fixed monthly transfer of forty-five hundred dollars. Three years. Thirty-six months. A hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars.
Recipient: Corinne Henson.
A new succulent on the balcony. Chocolates on the coffee table. A parking stub from a neighborhood I'd never been to, crumpled in his jacket pocket.
Cracks everywhere.
But the old me had never noticed a single one.
My phone rang. Lucinda.
"I found it. The woman's name is Corinne Henson. The Emerald Bay house is registered under her name, but the purchase funds came from one of David's offshore accounts."
"There's something else."
Her tone shifted.
"I pulled the hospital records from that year. Corinne was admitted to the same hospital three years ago to give birth."
"You were discharged within hours of each other. Ellie, the child she had was born only six hours apart from yours."