CHAPTER 5- THE LIE

I sat in the car outside longer than I meant to, engine ticking as it cooled, every light in the house already on like someone was expecting me.

I only came for what was left of my things. A few boxes. My mother's necklace. The albums Jack never wanted on the mantel because they made the house look — his words — too lived-in.

Then I got out, before I could talk myself into driving away.

The front door wasn't locked. Nobody in that house expected me to come back.

Jack was waiting in the entryway.

"You can stop pretending," he said.

"Pretending what, Jack?"

"That you don't know why I stopped loving you."

"I don't know why." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I've spent two days trying to figure out what I did, and I keep coming up with nothing, Jack."

He pulled his phone from his pocket instead of answering and swiped it awake.

A photograph. Me, standing close to a man in a white coat, our heads bent toward each other outside a hospital entrance.

"Who is that?"

"You tell me."

He swiped again. Another photo of me walking out of an office, him a step behind, his hand briefly at my elbow. Then a string of messages. Times. Dates.

The room narrowed around the screen, the edges going soft and grey. I heard my own pulse before I heard my own voice.

"That's Dr Thomas." The words came out too flat, too careful. "Nichols. My oncologist."

"That's not what it looks like."

"It's what it is." I reached for the phone. He pulled it back before I could hold it steady. "Jack, those are appointments. That's my treatment plan. He touched my elbow because I nearly fell walking out of a scan that told me my cancer had spread."

"You never mentioned him."

"Because there was nothing to mention."

"Six meetings. In four months."

"I was dying." My throat closed around the rest of it. When I got it out, it came out smaller than I wanted. "I had six meetings with the man trying to stop that from happening."

He didn't answer right away. The silence sat wrong in my chest. Pressed down on it. Made the air feel thinner than it should.

"Did you ever ask me?" I said. "Before the affair. Before the papers. Before your mother threw me into the street. Did you ever once sit me down and ask if it was true?"

"I saw the pictures."

"That's not the same as asking."

"I didn't need to ask. It was right there."

"Right there isn't the same as true."

"It looked true."

"It's supposed to look true. That's the entire point of a lie." I heard myself say it and knew, the second it was out, that it was exactly right. "Who gave you this, Jack?"

His jaw worked. He didn't answer.

"Who gave it to you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters more than anything else in this house."

He looked away first.

That was new. He'd never looked away first.

"What's going on in here?"

Georgina didn't wait for an answer. She walked past me like I was furniture and put her hand flat on Jack's chest, thumb hooking into his collar to straighten it, a gesture too familiar to be anything but practised.

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Everything in this house concerns me now." Her hand didn't leave Jack's collar. "Jack, sweetheart, what did she say to upset you?"

"She's trying to make it about her doctor."

"Nichols?" Her laugh came out short and sharp, nothing warm in it at all. "Of course she is. Deny, deflect. That's what people do when they've been caught."

"I wasn't caught doing anything."

"Weren't you?" She finally turned, and there was nothing soft left in her face. Nothing I recognised from three weeks of hospital visits and onion rings. "Six meetings in four months, Lauren. Alone. With a man who isn't your husband. Call it whatever you want."

"You know exactly what those meetings were."

"I know what you told me they were."

"Don't." My voice shook, and I hated that it did. "Not you. Not on top of everything else."

"Do what? Tell the truth?" She stepped closer to Jack, closer to me, until there was barely any room left between us. "She's embarrassed. That's all this is. She got caught, and now she wants you to feel guilty for noticing."

"I didn't have an affair."

"Prove it."

"I shouldn't have to prove anything to you."

"You should have thought about that before you started sneaking off to see him."

I reached out and pulled her hand off his collar before I'd decided to do it. Heat climbed up my neck, into my face, and the edges of the room went slightly too bright, like someone had turned up every lamp at once.

"Don't touch him while you're lying about me."

"Get your hand off me."

"Not until you tell him the truth."

She yanked free hard enough that I stumbled into the console table. A lamp rattled against the wood. She didn't apologise. She squared up instead, chin lifted.

"You want to hit me? Go ahead. Give Jack one more reason."

"Enough." Jack's voice cut through both of us, but it wasn't me he stepped toward. He put himself beside Georgina. Not between us. "Lauren, you need to leave."

"I came for my boxes."

"Now. Before this gets worse than it already is."

I looked at Georgina one more time. She was already smoothing her hair back into place, composing herself for whatever came next, and there wasn't a trace of guilt anywhere on her face.

I left without my boxes.

— —

The drive felt shorter than it should. I don't remember most of it. My hands stayed steady on the wheel while my mind replayed six meetings that took four months and somehow became the reason my marriage ended in one night.

And the reason Georgina put her hand on his chest like she'd earned the right to.

My phone vibrating in the cupholder.

Unknown number. The same one from two nights ago. The message I never opened.

I opened it now.

A photograph loaded slowly, one grainy strip at a time. Me and I, closer than either of the others, angled in a way that turned an ordinary conversation into something it never was.

Beneath it, one line.

You should have been more careful about whom you trusted. 

Before I could set the phone down, it rang again.

Same number.

A pin drop. Coordinates instead of an address, and beneath them four words that stopped my breath somewhere between my chest and my throat 

I'm closer than you think.