Chapter 3 - THE LIE HE BUILT AROUND ME
“You told her what?”
Gavin rubbed both hands over his face.
“Tessa, please listen.”
“No. You’ve been speaking for twelve days without knowing I could hear you. Now Maren speaks.”
Maren looked sick.
“He told me you’d admitted having an affair.”
I laughed.
There was no humor in it.
“With whom?”
“He never gave me a name.”
“Convenient.”
“He said the baby might not be his. He said you refused a paternity test.”
I looked at Gavin.
He stared at the grass.
I had never cheated.
Not emotionally.
Not physically.
Not once.
During my first trimester, I had barely possessed enough energy to shower, much less conduct a secret affair.
“Why would you believe that?” I asked Maren.
She looked ashamed.
“Because I wanted to.”
At least that was truthful.
Gavin finally spoke.
“I was confused.”
Dad swore beneath his breath.
I held up my hand.
“No. Explain the confusion.”
“I thought you were pulling away.”
“I was vomiting six times a day.”
“You stopped wanting me.”
“I was pregnant.”
“I know that now.”
“You knew it then!”
My voice finally broke.
My daughter kicked.
Hard.
I stopped.
Thirty-two people watched me inhale.
June appeared beside me immediately.
“Tess?”
“I’m fine.”
But I wasn’t.
I had promised myself Gavin would never get this version of me.
The devastated one.
He didn’t deserve to see what he had broken.
Then I realized something.
I didn’t need to hide my pain to prove I was strong.
Strength wasn’t pretending something didn’t hurt.
Strength was refusing to let the person who hurt you decide what happened next.
I looked at Maren.
“What else?”
She hesitated.
Gavin said, “There is nothing else.”
That answered my question.
“Maren?”
She reached into her purse.
“I brought this because I thought eventually we’d have to talk.”
She handed me her phone.
A message thread was open.
Gavin’s name.
I scrolled.
My stomach turned.
He had told her I was unstable.
That pregnancy had made me irrational.
That I controlled the finances.
That I threatened to keep him from our daughter.
That I refused to let him leave.
Then I found a message from three months earlier.
Once she signs the trust documents, I can leave without losing everything.
Maren had answered:
I don’t want her money.
Gavin:
Neither do I. I just want what I put into that house.
I looked up.
“What exactly did you put into my house, Gavin?”
He said nothing.
“Besides another woman?”
June muttered, “Jesus.”
I kept scrolling.
Then I found the money.
A photograph of a bank-transfer confirmation.
$18,000.
Sent to an account I didn’t recognize.
“What is this?”
Maren looked.
Her face changed.
“I don’t know.”
Gavin stepped forward.
“Give me the phone.”
Dad blocked him.
I held it away.
“There are three transfers.”
$18,000.
$15,000.
$15,000.
Forty-eight thousand dollars.
Exactly what was missing.
“Maren?”
“I swear I never saw those.”
They weren’t sent to her.
The account ended in 4418.
I knew nothing about it.
But Lorraine did.
“Oh my God.”
Everyone turned.
She stared at Gavin.
“Is that Dad’s old account?”
Gavin’s face answered before he did.
Lorraine sat down.
Her husband—Gavin’s father—had died four years earlier.
“What account?” I asked.
Lorraine looked devastated.
“After Richard died, there was a small business account nobody closed immediately. Gavin was an authorized signer.”
I looked at my husband.
“You stole our daughter’s savings.”
“I moved it.”
“Where?”
“It’s safe.”
“Where?”
He said nothing.
Dad stepped closer.
“You’d better answer her.”
Gavin’s composure cracked.
“It was temporary.”
“For what?”
“A business opportunity.”
“What business?”
Silence.
Then Maren whispered, “The restaurant.”
Gavin glared at her.
She looked at me.
“He told me he was buying into a restaurant downtown. He said it would be ours eventually.”
Ours.
One word.
That was all it took.
He hadn’t simply fallen into an affair.
He had constructed another life.
A baby.
A business.
My house.
My money.
And somehow, in his version of the story, I was the obstacle.
I handed Maren her phone.
“Send that entire thread to June.”
Gavin stepped toward me.
“No.”
I stared at him.
He stopped.
“You don’t get to tell me no anymore.”
His expression hardened.
“You think humiliating me in front of everyone makes you powerful?”
“No.”
I rested both hands over my daughter.
“Knowing the truth does.”
Twenty minutes later, Gavin left carrying one suitcase.
Nobody helped him.
Maren followed separately.
Before she reached the gate, she turned.
“I really am sorry.”
I looked at her.
“Then do one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Stop protecting him.”
Her eyes flickered.
I knew there was still something she hadn’t told me.
But she nodded.
That evening, after everyone left, June stayed.
We sat in the nursery surrounded by unopened gifts.
At 10:17 p.m., my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One photograph.
Gavin standing outside a downtown restaurant beside a man I didn’t recognize.
Underneath it were seven words.
Ask your husband what happened to $200,000.
I stared at the screen.
June read it over my shoulder.
May you like
“Tess?”
Forty-eight thousand dollars suddenly seemed like the smallest problem we had.
