At a restaurant with tuxedo-clad waiters and a personal sommelier, I ordered from a menu without prices, and thought only briefly of Mike’s damning receipt, crumpled in the pocket of his pants. I sipped a grapefruit martini and cut into a lobster-topped filet mignon, laughed at David’s story about a red-eye flight to Cincinnati, then told my own Taylor-inspired falsehood about a girls’ trip to Vegas.

  When we got back to the boat, we went to the upper deck, where he smoked a cigar and we opened a bottle of champagne. From the opposite dock, the Greedy Girl’s owners had their fiddles out, and the music floated past on the crisp salt air. After our second glass, David stood and started to move in rhythm with the beat, swiveling his hips and undulating his arms through the air. I started to laugh. “Stop. We’re too old to dance.”

  He beckoned at me with a smile.

  I shook my head.

  He took the champagne flute from my hand and pulled me to my feet. I reluctantly rocked my hips, my cheeks burning with self-consciousness.

  “Yes, you gorgeous minx.” He spun, his bare feet quiet on the deck, and I grew bolder as the song tempo moved into a rhythm I recognized.

  I hadn’t danced in a decade and I laughed aloud as we grew closer, his hands roaming over my bare arms, my exposed back, then up the short skirt of the dress. When he unzipped the back of it, I let him. When he pulled me onto the front cushioned lounge, I followed, and he tasted like cigar and bubbles, and I kissed him deeply and let every worry in my body float up to the clouds.

  I didn’t notice the dark figure a few boats over. I didn’t see the night-vision camera or feel the weight of observation.

  I was 100 percent focused on David, and on my own pleasure, and it was that selfish focus that caused everything that happened next.

  CHAPTER 32

  LILLIAN

  Come home asap.

  The text was sent by Mike and accompanied by three missed calls, none of which I saw because I was swimming in the Ritz-Carlton’s pool, my access granted by a pool attendant I’d met in the marina’s general store. I finished my twentieth lap and treaded water in the deep end, then practiced holding my breath. I made it thirty seconds, then forty. Forty-two, forty-three . . . My lungs ached as I burst to the surface and gasped for air. I treaded for another minute, then ducked underwater again.

  It was a good day to swim. The marina-adjacent hotel was in the quiet transition time between checkouts and check-ins, and the only other person in the pool was a dark-skinned teenager floating in an inner tube, her head back on the cushion, mouth relaxed, clearly asleep.

  I made it to forty-six seconds, then resurfaced, swimming to the side of the pool and pulling myself out. I grabbed the folded yellow towel and dried my ears as I returned to my chair, which was under a double umbrella, my piña colada turning soupy in the heat. Patting my face dry, I slid my sunglasses back on and reclined in the chair, humming along to a familiar reggae song being played by the steel drum band.

  This was the life. I used to spend weekdays in traffic, dictating obituary lines while cursing out fellow motorists. Now I had a few chapters left to read in my new book, nothing to do the rest of today, and a wallet crammed with tip money. While my new life wasn’t intellectually stimulating, the break was nice. I could grow my creative impulses in other ways. Maybe I could join a Mensa club or do crossword puzzles. Plus, I reminded myself, I could always write that damn novel.

  My phone pinged and I decided to ignore it. Mike was at work, Jacob was at school, and I was tired of Sam and his judgmental opinions. I lowered the back of the chaise longue and closed my eyes.

  Ping.

  Dammit. I groped at the side table—oh shoot, that was my drink—and found my phone and brought it to my face. Shielding the screen from the sun, I peered at the display, then sat up when I saw the missed-call activity and the texts—now three—from Mike.

  Come home asap.

  Jacob is here now.

  Did you know about this?

  My phone rang and I hesitated, afraid to answer it. Did I know about what? What was Jacob involved with? What had happened?

  I took a deep breath and answered the call, wincing at the realization that “Three Little Birds” would be audible in the background. “Hello?”

  “Lillian.”

  In just my name, Mike’s tone, and the pause after it, I knew that this was going to be bad.

  CHAPTER 33

  LILLIAN

  The platform of choice was TikTok, and the video was just bad enough to be crude, while not being so adult as to be blocked from the family-friendly platform.

  I sat at our dining room table, Mike’s phone in front of me, and watched the video with horror. It was on a loop, the music and video restarting as soon as it ended, like a bad dream that you can’t run away from.

  “The number under the heart is how many people liked it,” Mike said quietly. “The other figure is the number of comments.”

  There were 72 likes and 104 comments. I clicked on the comments, and everything instantly turned worse. If a video was worth a thousand words, here they all were.

  “Jacob has seen this?” I asked quietly.

  “He’s the one who showed it to me.”

  “Who posted this? Whose account is this on?” I tried to figure out where to click, how to get off this loop of torture.

  “It’s a new account. This is the only video on it. But at the bottom . . .”

  “I see it.” At the bottom of the description, it said More to come. “Is this legal?” I asked. “Isn’t this, like, revenge porn or something?”

  “I don’t know. We can call an attorney or the police.”

  “Shit.” I pushed the phone away from me and tried not to vomit. The thought of reporting this to the police—they’d laugh. They’d send us away, their time needing to be focused on real crimes, on something more important than sixty seconds that showed me dancing in my bra and underwear—God, I needed to lose more weight—on the front of David’s boat. Us kissing, my hand gripping his crotch through his pants. My head back, laughing as he knelt between my knees and lowered his mouth to my cleavage. Through all the video clips, there was a song playing, one labeled as “MILF,” the lyrics describing in crude detail how much the singer wanted to bang his friend’s mother. The video’s creator had dubbed in Jacob’s name in frequent fashion, so every reference was to wanting to “part Jacob’s mama’s legs” and so forth. It was a masterful and complete atom bomb of embarrassment—and the worst part was that it wasn’t just embarrassing to me. Jacob, who had once refused to go to school for three days because he had cut his cheek while shaving, would be mortified. Anyone, after reading the comments section, would be mortified for him.

  “We have to get this down,” I said desperately. “I don’t know how, but this can’t . . . How long has this been up?”

  “Four hours. It posted right before lunch. Apparently, it was all anyone was watching in the cafeteria. Jacob checked out as soon as he saw it.”

  Shit. He’d never forgive me for this. Ever. “Where is he?”

  “He just left. He said he was going for a drive.”

  I rested my head in my hands. “It’s about to be rush hour. You know how he gets.” Patience was a trait that Jacob had not yet found, and he’d already been in one fender bender due to his aggressive driving. Add heightened emotions to a heavy foot, and the results could be disastrous. Deadly. Teenagers were dying all the time in car accidents. Between that, suicides, and overdoses, it was amazing that any of them lived to see graduation.

  “I need this guy’s information. How long have you been seeing him?”

  His voice was calm and matter-of-fact, and had this been a quiz show, I would have correctly guessed this reaction.

  “A few weeks,” I hedged. “I met him the weekend Maurice Grepp died.” It was a lie, but a believable one, with just enough false detail to stick. My husband wasn’t the only one well versed in the art of deception.

  “What’s his name?” His pen was poised over the page as he waited expectantly, and this item I couldn’t lie about. A lie here he would unfurl in minutes.

  “David Laurent.” I had to clear my throat, the words getting stuck on their way out. “He’s nobody, Mike. I don’t—I don’t care about him. It was just a fling.” Shit, I sounded just like him.

  He didn’t respond. I chanced a look at him, but he was pushing to his feet and walking out of the room.

  CHAPTER 34

  LILLIAN

  In our bedroom, I changed out of my damp bathing suit and cover-up, the guilt radiating through me as I pulled on sweatpants and a T-shirt. From its place on the dresser, my phone vibrated.

  It was David. My anxiety deepened at the realization that his face was on that video too. What happened if the next one tagged him or if someone in his life saw it? What if this was just the start of the repercussions?

  I pulled my hair into a ponytail and steeled myself for what was downstairs—Mike’s risk-and-solutions assessment, which was already pages long and spread out on our dining table.

  The aftermath of this would not be messy, but it would be harsh. Mike was not emotional, but he was cold and vindictive. When the neighbors reported our trash cans for sitting too long on the curb, Mike audited ten years of archived satellite images of their home and then sent a two-inch-thick package of documentation to code enforcement, detailing the unauthorized improvements made, along with a list of current citations. He also sent a letter to their homeowner’s insurance, alerting them to their pit bull, Snuggles, who could barely move off the couch and played with butterflies in her spare time.

  I didn’t think my affair would break Mike’s heart, but it would insult his ego, and there would be punishment as soon as he properly handled the situation.

  Would he go after David, drunk and furious, his fists swinging to protect the woman he loved?

  No. The thought was almost humorous, if not heartbreaking.

  I checked my text messages to see if I had anything from Jacob. My last text, sent twenty minutes ago, was still missing the “Read” indicator.

  I took the steps downstairs, dreading what was ahead. “Jacob isn’t reading my text messages.”

  “He probably has his phone off.” Mike was back at the table and looked up from the notepad in front of him. “Give him a chance to cool off. You know how he is with caring about what other people think. He’s mad.”

  Jacob, for a teenager, had a very staunch moral code. If I’d sat him down and confessed that I was having an affair, he would have been distraught. If he was ever embarrassed in front of his friends, he would withdraw in mortification and anxiety. This was a combination of both, and I was sick to my stomach with a cocktail of guilt and intense rage for whoever had filmed and posted this.

  “Okay, I see this as several problems. First, we have the reputations of you, me, and this David Laurent. What do you know about him?” Mike looked up at me, his pen poised ready for action.

  “Look.” I sat across from him. “About that. I’m sorry. I was just so hurt from—”

  “Let’s focus on the problem,” Mike snapped. “What do you know of him? Is he married?”

  “No.” I knotted my arms over my chest. “He’s single. He, um. He has a chain of screen-printing T-shirt shops.”

  “Have you told him about this?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, we have to assume he’ll find out. It might affect his job, his clients, his reputation. Let’s talk about yours. Will the Times care about this?”

  The paper. Mike still thought that I was on a temporary leave of absence from the paper. I considered using this video as my excuse but dismissed that thought. We had enough lies between us already. “I was fired, before this happened. The paper isn’t taking me back.”

  He took it well, drawing a thin line through the words Lillian’s job in the aftereffects column. He moved to the next item, and for once, I was grateful he was so devoid of human emotion. “On my front, it’s personally embarrassing, but I don’t think any of my clients or coworkers will care. Other than a weakening of my perceived masculine attributes, there should not be any financial repercussions, assuming that this video doesn’t go viral and isn’t followed up by more—”

  “Mike, can we not do this?” I interrupted, holding up my hand. “We don’t even know where our son is. I can’t deal with a spreadsheet of action items right now.”

  I should have just let him do it, should have understood that he was working through his emotions in the best way that he knew how—but I couldn’t. I couldn’t dissect and analyze all the ways that my actions were going to affect my family. I couldn’t listen to the fallout before it came.

  I didn’t wait for a response. Just as he had done earlier, I stood up and walked out.

  CHAPTER 35

  MIKE

  I had two issues in front of me, and an internet video of my wife whoring it up wasn’t my biggest concern. That would get taken down. Jacob would man up and get over it. Lillian would behave, thanks to this punishment.

  David Laurent, on the other hand, needed to be handled. Delicately handled, without Lillian’s awareness or any red flags.

  Did he have to die? That was the first question on my list, and still had a blank beside it.

  I hoped not. The aftermath of death was always a bitch of loose ends.

  CHAPTER 36

  LILLIAN

  I woke up with a sense of doom. Kicking off my covers, I stared up at the ceiling fan of the guest room, which needed to be replaced. There was a sticker of a heart on one fan blade, a carryover from when the room had been a young girl’s bedroom.

  I hadn’t slept in the guest room in years, not since I had the flu and quarantined myself in an attempt to keep the others from getting sick. Now I’d quarantined myself due to the scorn. Mike and Jacob might be silent, but I could still feel their disdain, thickening the air and clogging my chest to a point where it felt impossible to breathe.

  At two o’clock, Mike and I had an appointment with Amy Kluckman, an attorney who specialized in internet defamation. Legal representation was an item on Mike’s list, and I was dreading the event and all the questions the lawyer would have for me.

  At least Jacob had come home last night. At almost one in the morning, his car had pulled into the drive and he had slunk from the Volkswagen into the house, his sweatshirt hood up, hands in the pockets, a clear sign that he didn’t want to talk. I’d watched him from the living room window, and when he entered the side door, I stayed in the corner as he practically sprinted up the stairs and to his bedroom.

  I could have slept in our room. After I had confronted him about his affair, Mike continued to sleep in our bed, his back to me, a wall of pillows between us. I could have taken my normal place and stared at my bedside table, with the chip in the corner of the wood and the tissue box that blocks the glare of the clock. I had considered it and hesitated at the bedroom door, my hand on the knob. I’d jerked away, hating the thought of lying in bed and feeling the weight of his judgment.

  All night long, I had struggled for sleep, the hours stretching by slowly as my mind had tried to sort through the complicated layers of guilt and the mystery of who, why, and how this had happened.

  I kept getting stuck on how we would move forward, past this. Mike and I were both guilty in this marriage. Maybe he had been the initial unfaithful one, but I dove into the sinful waters with him, and now Jacob was being punished for my crime.

  I crushed the pillow to my face and screamed, a long howl of frustration, because while I could confess my sins to Jacob and apologize, I couldn’t—shouldn’t—tell him what his father had done. While it might make me feel better for Jacob to hate us both, it wasn’t about my feelings or justifications for my actions. It was about our son and trying to make this easier for him, and that sort of self-sacrifice . . . tasted like rotten cheese in my mouth.

  I groaned and tossed the pillow to one side. Unplugging my phone from the charger, I refreshed the TikTok link that Mike had texted me last night.

  The video was still up and now had 239 likes and almost 300 comments. I was staring at the screen, my heart sinking past the cramp in my stomach, when I heard Sam call out a hello from downstairs.

  I bolted from the bed and toward the stairs. Scrambling down the flight, I rounded the final step and flung myself into his arms. Gripping him tightly, I started to cry.

  “Hey, hey,” he shushed as he carried me into the living room and lowered me onto the love seat. I sank into the leather and clung to his side.

  “Did Mike call you?” I sniffed.

  “A friend of mine sent me the link.” He winced. “Lill—”

  “I know. It’s bad.”

  Sam carefully untangled himself from my grip. “Stay,” he commanded, as if I were a dog. “I’m going to get you a Xanax.”

  I didn’t argue, grateful for a friend with pharmaceutical connections. From the kitchen, I heard the ice maker, then the crinkle of a water bottle. He returned, with a glass and a small yellow pill. “Here. Take this and take a deep breath. You’re shaking.”

  I needed something stronger than water. Vodka or, better yet, tequila. He nudged the glass toward me, and I took it. “Jacob’ll never forgive me.” I placed the pill on my tongue, then drank half the glass.

  Sam was still standing there, and my gratitude to him dipped slightly at the judgmental look on his face. “This is where you tell me that I’m wrong, and he’ll get over this within a week.”

  “He’s a teenager. He doesn’t—and won’t—understand adult relationships, not for a while. He’s going to be pissed, Lill. That’s just how this is going to go. He’s going to be mad and embarrassed, and it’s going to last awhile.”

  He was right, which only made me more despondent. I moved to the couch and collapsed on the dark leather.

  “Any words of wisdom?” I asked as I waited for the antianxiety medication to kick in. I should have called him and gotten one of these last night. I had stared up at the guest room ceiling for hours, my mind racing through how big a disaster this was.