The smile slid off her face.
On top sat a small handwritten card.
Happy Birthday, Brooke. I made the potato salad.
Beneath it lay the framed photograph. The hotel bathroom. The marble counter. The gray sweatshirt with the bleach stain on the cuff. The words printed neatly underneath:
Can’t wait for Friday.
Brooke looked at me. Then at the photo. Then back at me. A few people near the end of the table leaned in to see.
“Brooke?” Greg said. “What is that?”
She didn’t answer. With trembling hands, she pulled out the folder underneath and opened it.
Hotel receipts. The unpaid loan with Daniel’s signature as co-signer. The wire transfer of my father’s inheritance. The registry page for Family Holdings LLC, with one owner’s name highlighted in yellow.
Daniel had come up behind me. I heard him take a sharp breath.
“Claire,” he whispered. “What is this? That’s… that’s the investment fund.”
“There is no fund, Daniel,” I said quietly, without taking my eyes off Brooke. “There’s just her.”
Each page made Brooke’s hands shake a little harder.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered.
“I understand more than you think.”
Her head snapped up. “What?”
“There’s one more envelope,” I said.
The color drained from her face. Slowly, she reached under the folder and pulled out the plain white envelope.
“Open it,” I said.
Her fingers fumbled with the flap. She unfolded the pages inside. They were the hotel’s billing statements for the room on the north side of the city. Every Friday, for nearly two years. And beneath them, a copy of the credit card statement that had paid for every single night.
The name on the card wasn’t Daniel’s.
It wasn’t Greg’s.
“No,” Brooke breathed. “No…”
She looked up, and her eyes went straight to the grill.
Every head in the backyard turned with hers.
Richard had gone completely still, a spatula frozen in his hand.
Brooke closed her eyes. “You shouldn’t have found that.”
“I wasn’t looking for it,” I said. “I spent six months trying to prove you were sleeping with my husband.” I let the silence stretch. “I never imagined I’d find out you were sleeping with his father.”
