Chapter 9 - The Papers on the Passenger Seat
I parked under the second carport at my sister's apartment complex and kept the engine running for the air. It was just past noon and the heat made the asphalt smell like tar. My hands were shaking enough that I had to set the folder on my thighs and press down on it to keep it still.
Jenna had left the guest spot open for me and texted, door's unlocked, take your time. I didn't go up. I wasn't ready to carry this inside and have to explain my face. I wanted to know first, alone, what I'd actually placed by our front door that morning.
The folder was the plain manila kind Derek used for taxes. I flipped the metal clasp up with my thumb. Inside, the papers weren't in order. That was my fault. I'd grabbed what I'd found in his desk drawer over two nights and shoved them in without sorting.
The first page was a printed email confirmation for two plane tickets. I stared at the dates. One seat in his name. One seat in hers. I didn't know her last name then. On that confirmation she was listed as L. Mercer. The flight was for the week after my due date. Not a work conference. Not a red-eye he'd mentioned with a client in Denver. This was a one-way itinerary to Phoenix.
I laid it on the passenger seat and smoothed it flat. The paper stuck a little to my palm.
Underneath were gas station receipts and a hotel receipt from a weekend he'd told me he was in Columbus for inventory. The hotel was forty minutes from our house, out by the highway interchange. Two nights. Paid with the credit card we didn't use for groceries. The checkout time was stamped 11:14 a.m. on a Sunday he'd come home and told me the trip ran long.
I didn't cry. My chest just got tight, the way it had at the doctor's office that morning when the nurse told me to breathe slow.
The third set of pages was heavier stock. A draft lease. Twelve months for a two-bedroom apartment in a complex near the airport in Phoenix. His initials were already on the bottom of two pages in blue ink. Small, careful letters. D.H. The third page had a blank line for co-applicant. Someone had typed L. Mercer in light gray draft text, like a placeholder that wasn't a placeholder.
I read the start date three times. The first of next month. The deposit amount matched a withdrawal I'd seen on our checking app last week and told myself was for the crib mattress upgrade.
That was the connection. The woman in the dark coat by the silver SUV wasn't a ride to the airport. She was on paperwork. She was on a flight. She was penciled into an apartment.
I sat back against the headrest and put both hands on my belly until the baby shifted, a slow roll from left to right. The air conditioner blew cold against my sweater. Outside, a kid dragged a scooter across the lot and a screen door slammed somewhere above me.
I knew I couldn't leave those copies loose. If he came looking, if he said I'd misunderstood, I needed more than memory. I picked up my phone and took a photo of every page on the passenger seat, one at a time, making sure the dates and totals were clear. The shutter sound clicked loud in the car. I did the front and back of the lease draft. I did the email header with the confirmation number. I checked each image before I moved to the next.
When I was done I slid everything back into the folder in the order I'd found it and snapped the clasp shut. Jenna had a small fire safe in her closet from when she did home health billing. She'd told me the code months ago. I zipped the folder into my duffel bag so no pages would slip out on the stairs.
May you like
I turned off the car. The sudden quiet pressed on my ears.
This hadn't been sudden. That was what settled in my stomach as I sat there with my keys in my lap. A man didn't initial a lease and book a one-way flight in a panic by the front door. He'd packed a large suitcase while I stood there in my sweater and leggings. He'd planned the exit and kept living next to me while he did it.
