The Other Mrs. Cross

ISLA POV The gym smelled like burnt popcorn and glue sticks, which is what an elementary school fundraiser smells like no matter which elementary school you're at, and I was elbow-deep in cupcake wrappers when Dana Whitfield leaned over the bake sale table holding her phone up like she'd found something urgent."Okay, don't judge me, I'm looking for my sister's banana bread recipe and I have four thousand pictures of my dog instead." She swiped through her camera roll, laughing at herself, phone tilted my way without really thinking about it. "Wait…. isn't that your husband?"She turned the screen toward me before the question fully landed. An airport photo, clearly an accident, background noise from a trip she'd taken last week,travelers near a gate, rolling suitcases, the general mess of an airport lounge. And just behind her own shoulder in the frame, a man in a gray suit laughing at something, a woman's hand resting on his forearm.He had Julian's jaw. Julian's exact haircut. Jul

ISLA povNora was already at the table when I got there, two coffees ordered, hers black and mine drowning in enough syrup to embarrass a teenager, which she found hilarious and I stopped being embarrassed about around year three of this friendship."You look tired." She slid my cup over. "Good tired or bad tired?""Mabel's face-painting booth is apparently a two-person job now, so mostly just tired-tired." I wrapped both hands around the cup. "How was your weekend?""Boring. Josh's parents visited. I aged four years." She stirred her coffee even though there was nothing in it to stir. "How's Julian? Still living at airports?""Denver this week."Something crossed her face, quick, there and gone, the kind of thing you miss if you weren't already looking for reasons to look for things. "Denver. Huh.""What?""Nothing, it's dumb." She waved it off, laughed a little at herself. "I could've sworn I saw him Tuesday. Downtown, that steakhouse on Fifth, the one with the ridiculous valet line

ISLA povJulian's text came in at 11:40. ‘Left the Ferris contract on the kitchen counter, need it before noon, can you run it over? Sorry, I know it's a pain.’I stood in the kitchen holding my phone, staring at that message a beat longer than it deserved. He had a courier service on retainer for exactly this kind of thing. I could've called them, had the folder picked up in fifteen minutes, and never left the house. Instead I grabbed my keys off the hook, and I didn't examine too closely why some part of me had been waiting for a reason to walk back through those doors.I hadn't set foot in Cross Developments in years. I used to tell people it just never came up anymore, which was true and also not the reason. The reason was that walking into a building with my own fingerprints all over its bones, and having no actual claim to any of it, felt like visiting a house I used to live in after someone else moved in and repainted every wall.The lobby had changed since I'd been gone. New c