Chapter 4 - Heather’s Name
By the time the house went quiet, Edgar was already gone.
I stood in the dining room with my phone in one hand and the empty place where the blue folder had been in front of me. The silence felt staged, like the rooms were waiting to see what I’d do next. Then I remembered the tablet on the kitchen counter—the one Edgar and I used for recipes, bills, and whatever else we didn’t want to squint at on our phones.
It was still signed in to the account we shared.
I brought it to the table. My migraine had dulled to a tight ache behind my eyes, but when the screen lit, the brightness made me wince. I nearly set it down. Instead, I opened the messages app and typed Heather’s name into the search bar.
A thread appeared.
For a few seconds I just stared at it, as if the name might change if I waited. Then I tapped.
The newest message was from the night before.
Miss you. Come over when she’s asleep.
Edgar’s reply sat beneath it.
I’ll find a way. Soon.
The dates went back months. There were jokes I didn’t understand, plans that had apparently happened while I was at work or sitting in a clinic waiting room. Then a message from Heather, sent two weeks earlier: I hate that we have to keep pretending.
Edgar had answered with a heart.
My fingers tightened around the tablet. I felt each small detail like a pinprick—the casual certainty, the years of ordinary days they’d stolen from me without ever having to enter the house together. I had spent so long asking myself what I’d done wrong that I hadn’t considered how easily the truth could be sitting in plain sight.
The tablet made a soft chime. A new message appeared at the bottom of the thread.
Did you talk to your mom?
Edgar’s answer followed.
She said she handled it.
My throat closed. The words didn’t explain everything. They didn’t have to. I took a picture of the screen with my phone, making sure the names and dates were visible, then backed out of the thread.
I called my financial adviser.
He answered on the fourth ring, his voice rough with sleep. I apologized for the hour and asked him to confirm whether the policy paperwork I’d received was real.
“It’s real,” he said after checking. “You’re the policy owner. Edgar is listed as the beneficiary.”
“Can he change anything?”
“Not without your authorization.”
I looked toward the front window, where Edgar’s car had vanished into the gray morning.
“Could he get money from it while I’m alive?”
“No. It doesn’t give him access to your other accounts.”
I let out a breath that didn’t feel like relief so much as air I’d been holding by mistake. The policy was real. The messages were real. And whatever Edgar had taken from the table, he hadn’t taken my ability to understand what I was looking at.
“Thank you,” I said, and ended the call.
I didn’t want to stay in the house. I wanted a cup of coffee somewhere people knew my name, somewhere Edgar couldn’t tell me what I meant. I called June, my closest friend from the neighborhood.
She picked up sounding awake at once.
“Are you safe?”
“I think so.”
“That’s not the same as yes.”
“I know.”
“Meet me at the café on Maple. I’ll be there in ten.”
June didn’t ask me to prove anything before she believed me. That alone nearly undid me.
The café smelled of burnt espresso and cinnamon syrup. June had taken a booth near the front window, where she could see the door. When I slid in across from her, she reached for my hand, then stopped halfway, letting me decide.
I turned my palm up.
“I found messages,” I said. “Edgar and Heather are together.”
June’s face changed, hurt and anger rising at once. She didn’t say she’d suspected it. She didn’t ask how I knew. She just held my hand across the table.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I looked down at our joined hands. “I keep thinking I should’ve seen it.”
“You were trusting your husband. That isn’t a crime.”
The words landed somewhere tender. I blinked hard and took out my phone, showing her the photographs from the tablet. June read the exchange once, then again, her mouth tightening at the line about Edgar’s mother handling it.
“You don’t go back there alone,” she said.
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“Good. You can come to my place tonight. I’ll pick you up, and you can leave your car here if you want. If you have to go back for anything, I come with you.”
I nodded. The plan was small, almost ordinary: a ride, a place to sleep, another person who knew what had happened. It was the first time all morning I could imagine getting through the next hour without making myself smaller.
June leaned closer. “Do you want me to call someone?”
“Not yet. I want to understand what I’m dealing with before I decide.”
“Then we do that. Together.”
My phone buzzed on the table.
The number wasn’t saved. The message was short.
Stop looking into Heather. Next time, you may lose more than sleep.
June read it over my shoulder. Her fingers closed around her coffee cup.
“Do you know that number?”
“No.”
“Don’t answer it.”
I took a screenshot. The café’s front door opened behind June, letting in a gust of cold air and the street’s muted rush. She glanced toward the sound. I glanced down at the phone again.
May you like
A second message had arrived.
It was a photograph of me entering the café, taken only minutes earlier.
