Chapter 3
My apartment on Milwaukee smelled like rain and old radiators when I got home at ten. I hadn't turned the heat high enough that morning, thinking I'd be back before dark, thinking Jake would be coming over. Now the rooms felt empty in a new way — not lonely, but cleared out, like after movers leave.
I put the lowball glass memory down and picked up my phone. The whiskey was still on my hands, faint.
The photo was still there. She hadn't deleted it. Of course she hadn't. Her handle was @megan_kate_chi, realtor, twenty-six, looped earrings, kitchen with white quartz I remembered because Jake had sent me a picture of it when he was helping his dad stage a condo last spring. He'd said, "Look at this backsplash." I'd said, "Nice." That same kitchen now had his arm in it.
I went close again, but this time I didn't look at him. I looked at the edges. The time on her microwave said 2:41. The mail on her counter had a name — M. Keller — and a building number. The wine bottle open behind them was the cheap rosé Jake always said gave him a headache. He drank it anyway for her.
My first instinct, the old one, was to text him: explain? But I heard his father's words again in the bar's low quiet. Your son chose poorly. That wasn't a plea. That was an assessment. And I realized I was done asking for explanations that would make me feel smaller.
I opened my laptop instead. Our shared calendar still had his entries on it. Dentist Tuesday 10 a.m. Foundation board lunch Thursday. Lake house this weekend — canceled? No, still there, in his blue. I clicked it. Location: Lake Forest, his parents' house. Guests: Lara + Jake. He hadn't removed me.
A new notification slid in at the top — a text from a number I didn't have saved. The card.
> Lara. It's Thomas Reid. You got home safe. No need to reply tonight. — T
Thomas. I hadn't known his first name until then. He'd always been Mr. Reid, or Jake's dad. Seeing it plain like that, typed with a period, made him more human and more intimidating at once.
I didn't reply. I set the phone face down and went to my closet. The white satin dress still had the bar's warmth in it. I hung it carefully, not tossing it, because I refused to make it a costume from a bad night. I put on sweatpants and a Northwestern tee that was mine, not his.
Then I did the thing I'd been avoiding. I called Megan.
She answered on the third ring, bright. "Hello?"
"Hi," I said. My voice was steady, which surprised me. "This is Lara. Jake's girlfriend."
A beat. Then a smaller voice. "Oh."
"I saw the photo," I said. "I don't want to fight. I just want to know — when did this start?"
She breathed. I could hear a TV behind her, same kitchen echo. "We met at the open house on Division," she said quietly. "Three weeks ago. He said you two were — he said you were broken up."
Three weeks. Not an afternoon. Not a stupid single choice. Three weeks of him coming home to me, kissing my cheek, talking about Thanksgiving.
I closed my eyes. The radiator hissed.
"Thank you for being honest," I said, because someone in this needed to be.
"Is he — are you okay?" she asked.
"I will be," I said. And I meant it. I hung up before she could apologize more, before I could become the villain in her story or she in mine.
I sat on the edge of my bed with the phone in both hands, the card on my nightstand. The apartment traffic hummed on Milwaukee below. Tomorrow I would have to decide what to do with Thanksgiving, with the work holiday party we were supposed to attend together at the foundation tower, with the friends who thought we were solid. Tonight, I just sat with the new fact that the story his father told in the bar — my son chose poorly, singular — was cleaner than the truth. And that Thomas Reid had known enough to come find me before I found this.
May you like
My phone lit again. Jake: Please talk to me. I made a mistake.
I didn't answer. I turned the phone over and looked at the card one more time. Call me. Not yet. But I didn't throw it away.
