Doug sent updates through an encrypted email account I created under my old college login, one Nathan didn’t know existed because it belonged to a version of me he had quietly encouraged out of the frame. The first photos came in on a Thursday night while Nathan was supposedly with a contractor from Boston.
I opened them at 11:32 p.m. in the nursery, my laptop balanced on a stack of unpacked diaper boxes.
There he was.
Nathan, stepping out of a black town car outside the Meridian. Hand on the lower back of a woman in a cream coat. Her hair was dark blonde, long and expensive-looking, the kind that always falls back into place after wind. In the next image, they were at a restaurant three blocks away, leaning toward each other over candlelight.
Nathan was smiling.
Not his public smile. Not the polished one he wore at galas or client dinners. This one was loose. Easy. Boyish, almost. I had not seen that expression directed at me in years, and it hit harder than the hotel charge ever did.
I clicked to the third image and went completely still.
The woman had tucked her hair behind one ear.
At her throat, catching the restaurant light, was the sapphire pendant.