Eighteen months earlier.
Then further back.
I looked up.
“This isn’t Olivia.”
“No,” Tessa said softly.
“That’s me.”
I stared at her.
“You’re…”
“One of them.”
I looked around the table again.
Seven women.
“No.”
I wasn’t even sure what I was denying.
Tessa moved the phone closer.
“Keep scrolling.”
So I did.
Tessa.
Brooke.
Olivia.
Someone Marcus met at a conference.
Another woman who worked near his office.
Once all the information was together, the pattern became painfully obvious.
Thursday evenings.
Late meetings.
Gym sessions that mysteriously ran long.
Work trips that somehow always began a day earlier than necessary.
Marcus hadn’t made one careless mistake.
He had created another life.
Several other lives, actually.
And all of them had existed beside the life we shared.
“He told me he was separated,” Tessa said.
“Me too,” Brooke added. “He told me you were still living together temporarily because you were sorting out the house.”
