chapter 88

Alex

Everything blurred for an instant. I remembered the divorce papers on my desk, the call from an investor that pulled me away and I left Vanessa behind in my office. Suddenly, a hundred small missing pieces clicked together into a shape I hated.

“You’re saying Vanessa handed Emily the papers?” I asked, feeling stupid for not seeing it before. “I left the file in my office that day. I was gone for only a moment. She was the last person there. You saw it?”

“She told me,” my mother said. “She came to me afterward and she said she found the papers on your desk and had me deliver them to Emily. She said she did it to help you. And she told me she paid someone to make those photos to make Emily look like she was with another man. She had them Photoshopped.”

My breath left me with a ragged sound. I felt like someone had carved a hole in my chest. All the anger I’d buried for years, the sharp loneliness, the nights I had blamed myself for losing Emily, everything rose up raw and alive.