@ryanswife9: that’s why it isn’t the scooter rider, @greengoblin. She never does the obvious one.

  @jessbessandtess: Maybe she’s doing the obvious one to throw us off the scent

  @planktonsboss: Truck swerved to avoid the scooter, hit the dog-walker. #micdrop

  They were off base, and I tried to think of a clue that would be accurate but wouldn’t completely give away the answer—that the truck hit the scooter, the driver thought he’d killed her, and he’d pulled over and shot himself in guilt.

  “Something’s different.” Sam spoke from the doorway of the kitchen, and I looked up from the phone to see him leaning against the frame, his arms crossed over a tight yellow golf shirt. “What is it?”

  I smiled, surprised to see him. “Hey. I thought you were in San Francisco this week.”

  “The client flaked. Decided to move south instead of north. We’re going to look at homes in San Diego tomorrow.”

  Placing my phone on the counter, I picked the grate back up and resumed my scrub. Dammit. I should have soaked it first.

  “What are you doing?” Sam came to stand beside me. “Is that part of the oven?”

  “Yeah, I’m deep cleaning.” I shook my hands above the soapy water, then dried them off, dropping the dishcloth in front of David’s card before Sam could notice it.

  “Why?”

  “Good question.” I blew out a breath and turned to the small round table between the kitchen and the living room. Pulling out one of the chairs, I sank into it and watched as he circled the table, eyeing the spots before carefully pulling out the one that Mike normally took. Sam hitched up the thighs of his dress pants before sitting down, and the care that he took with every movement was infuriating. For once, I’d like to see him trip over a cord or snort up soda or have a piece of spinach in his teeth. He would never be in my situation. He would have seen Mike’s affair—or was it affairs?—from a mile off, plotted and planned a contingency plan, and found a way to seduce and marry the prospective mistress before she ever found her way to his husband.

  Meanwhile I was . . . I didn’t know what I was doing. I was sitting here, scrubbing Mike’s kitchen, while I trusted his promise that he would break things off with this woman. I should have pressed for her name and insisted that he call her right then, while I was still in the car, and heard their conversation for myself.

  But I hadn’t wanted that. I hadn’t wanted the proof that she was real. I liked the blank slate that came to mind when I tried to picture her. If I figured out that she was our new neighbor, or his HR director, or the dental hygienist that always flirted with him . . . I would obsess. Research her. Follow her. Practice my accusations and confrontations until the moment when opportunity and weakness intersected and I did something that I could never take back.

  “Lill?” Sam leaned forward, and his expensive watch clinked against the freshly polished wood surface of the table. “You’re freaking me out. Are you okay?”

  “It’s Mike.” My words were slow and measured, carefully controlled and void of emotion. “He’s cheating on me.”

  Sam looked down at the table and ran his fingers along a grain of the wood. “With who?”

  “I don’t know.” I let out a strangled laugh. “I don’t care. He says it’s over.”

  “Do you believe that?” He lifted his gaze, and I could see the struggle to hold back his true feelings. Sam had been in my life for almost six years. He’d lived through more than a few ups and downs in our marriage, and acted as my counselor on each occasion.

  “Yeah, I do. He was . . .” I started over. “He knows what’s at stake. Between Jacob and me, he has too much to lose. And he told me it was just sex. If that’s true . . .” I rubbed my eyes, relieved to see that they were still dry. “He’d be stupid to risk our marriage for that. Even if we are a little . . .” I tried to find the right word. “Disconnected right now.”

  “This isn’t a recent thing, Lill. You were complaining about Mike two years ago. Did he say how long he’s been cheating on you?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to think about the possibility that this was a long-term relationship. Sam’s input wasn’t helping, and a wave of annoyance flared at his unannounced drop-in. I needed to do a better job of defining our friendship boundaries. Maybe it was time for me to ask for my house key back. Was it possible to draw a line here and block any further opinions on my marriage?

  “I’ve got to get back to cleaning.” I stood up. “I’d take off, unless you want to grab a toothbrush and work on the grout lines.”

  “You’re avoiding this.” Sam stayed in his seat. “You need to leave him, Lill. Otherwise he’s not going to learn. He’ll behave for a little while, but then he’ll do it again.”

  He might have been right, but I had already considered and discarded that path. Maybe in a month or two, I’d be open to it, but I couldn’t wrap my head around that momentous a decision now. I needed to defrost the freezer, reline the cabinet drawers, and then wash the blinds above the sink. Those were things I could do—things I could handle—now.

  I turned the faucet on high and picked the oven grate back up. Fishing the scrub pad out of the cloudy water, I attacked the grime with fresh vigor. Silence stretched after Sam’s comment, and I ignored it, focusing on a spot of burned crust that was starting to break down from my efforts.

  Sam’s chair dragged back against the tile, and he came up behind me and squeezed my shoulders gently. “Okay, I’ll leave you alone.” He kissed the top of my head. “Call me when you want to talk.”

  “Thanks. Love you.” I turned to give him an apologetic smile, but he was already heading for the door. It closed behind him with a gentle click, but his last opinion hung in the air long after he got in his Range Rover and drove away.

  Was he right? Was it just a matter of time before Mike cheated again?

  SIX WEEKS BEFORE THE DEATH

  CHAPTER 15

  LILLIAN

  A week passed and my hurt turned to anger. I ignored Mike, who was suddenly home for dinner each evening, his leftover work performed in his office, attention poured on me at night. I rejected his advances, and began to notice the bags under his eyes, the slight recession of his hairline, the annoying way he held his food in his mouth for a moment before swallowing it.

  Was he who I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with?

  What’s crazy is that the sex with the other woman wasn’t what was making me mad. It was the money. The expensive dinner had been a hint. What else had there been? Hotel rooms. Roses? Gifts? Was he paying her rent, while we still had Jacob’s future college bills hanging over our heads?

  It was a stupid thing to care about, but that’s what I had been obsessing about. How much had he spent on her? How much had she been worth to him?

  “Good morning.”

  I turned from my spot at the kitchen window to see Jacob rounding the bottom of the stairs, his school uniform on, his hair still messy from sleep. He needed a haircut. His dark locks now curled along his purple collar, and I was pretty sure the shaggy style was an intentional move to piss off his father. I could get on board with that. I set my coffee on the counter. “Hungry?”

  “I’ll get some cereal.” He opened the pantry door and reached for a box of Froot Loops. “There’s some light that came on in my car. The uh . . . the engine light.”

  “You tell your dad?” I pulled a bowl from the cabinet and set it at the bar, then retrieved a spoon for him.

  “Not yet. He’ll probably tell me it’s the oil change thing I was supposed to do last week.”

  I took a seat at the stool next to him and watched as he shook out the brightly colored rings. “He’s probably right.”

  “I heard Nora Price died.”

  “Yep.”

  “I wish you still did the famous people.”

  “Yeah.” I picked up the coffee cup and warmed my hands on the smooth ceramic. “Me too.”

  “Remember when you did Robin Williams?” He perked up. “Or Michael Jackson? And you took me with you to Neverland Ranch?”

  Yeah, probably not my finest parenting moment. I was saved from a response by my phone, which dinged with an email notification. Opening it, I swiped past the new message, which was a junk email about bedding. Scrolling down, I saw an email from Fran at 6:45 a.m. At first glance, the time would have been worrisome, except that my editor was from New York and liked to remind everyone of that fact with annoying habits like sticking to an East Coast work schedule, even though she’d been in Los Angeles for almost a decade.

  The email was short and to the point (another New York holdover).

  Reminder: Employee review today at 10am.

  Shit. I glanced at the clock. No time for a shower. I carried my coffee to the sink and poured it out.

  “So why did you stop with the celebrities?”

  I turned on the hot water and made a face he couldn’t see. We had shielded him from the mess last year, avoiding any mention or discussion of the Axe twins in his presence. He hadn’t seemed to notice I’d stopped doing celebrity obits, his attention glued to video games, card games, and wiping his browser search history. I glanced at him, surprised to have his full focus, an honor I hadn’t received in years. “Ummm . . . one of my interviews went poorly. It was supposedly a suicide, but there were too many clues pointing against that. I thought the woman’s twin sister was in jeopardy, tried to warn her.”

  “Wait, you’re talking about the coffee twins? The hot ones?”

  I rinsed out the orange mug. “Yeah, I’m surprised you know who they are.”

  “The dead one was in Maxim. Trent has a poster of her up in his game room.”

  Of course he does.

  “So you went, like, superspy on them? Damn, Mom. That’s cool.”

  Oh yes, very cool. It was so cool when I had sneaked past Brexley Axe’s security and interrupted her dinner party to warn her about the possible threat and show her my research. It was so cool when she had swung a bottle of wine at my head and screamed for someone to help. It was so cool when I tried to run and was tackled by a three-hundred-pound bodyguard and hog-tied with handcuffs. If I’d gotten any cooler, I’d be in prison right now.

  I set the cup upside down on the drying rack. “I’ve got to run upstairs and change. Have a good day at school.”

  He leaned in as I kissed him on the top of the head, his spoon rising to his mouth, attention back on his phone, the hot twins already forgotten.

  “Love you,” I called as I left the kitchen and started up the stairs.

  He grunted through a mouthful of cereal in response.

  CHAPTER 16

  LILLIAN

  While waiting outside Fran’s office, my ankles crossed and tucked under the stiff chair like a kid outside the principal’s, I read the news on my phone. There was an article about a lawsuit the Marina del Rey boat owners were filing, and I fished David’s card out of my purse to forward him the article. He had mentioned keeping a boat in their slips just outside the coffee shop.

  I started to write the email, then realized my mistake. I couldn’t send him something as Lillian Smith. Not when I had introduced myself as Taylor. I swapped methods and picked up the card, looking for his cell number. There was only a WhatsApp number, and I recalled him tapping it as he handed it over and asking me if I’d used the messaging app. As Taylor, I had laughed, because of course I had. And honestly, I did use WhatsApp, with Mike, who had always been paranoid that Apple was somehow reading (and cared about) our text messages.

  I opened the app, checked to make sure my username on it was still just my phone number (no Lillian reveal there), and started a thread to him. I pasted the link, then composed an accompanying message that was as unflirty as possible.

  Thought you’d find this interesting, though you probably already know all about it. - Taylor (from the coffee shop)

  Before sending, I read it twice, testing the tone in my mind. It was good. Not suggestive or flirty. Appropriate for a married mother. Though . . . would Taylor send something different?

  Yes, of course she would. Taylor would send a flirty pic, probably one from an exotic vacation, along with a fun message, not a boring article. I opened my camera roll and scrolled through the albums. Thanks to Mike’s fear of flying, most of our vacations were in dull locales like Bryce Canyon or the Sequoia National Forest. I opened our Lake Tahoe album and found a photo of me floating in an inner tube. It was by a spit of island, and the waters around me looked straight out of a Caribbean brochure. In it, I was wearing a red one-piece and white sunglasses and was laughing at something that Mike had said, right before he snapped the picture. I copied it and attached it to a new text to David.

  You taking your boat out soon? I’m floating here—no, that was stupid.

  Just wanted to say hi. Also dumb.

  Hey coffee twin. How’s Fresno?

  Not bad. We had laughed at our identical coffee orders (pumpkin spice with almond milk), so he would be reminded of who I was, and the picture would help. He lived in Fresno but spent half his time in LA, one of the few items he’d shared while he was busy asking questions about my fascinating life. I—

  “Lillian?”

  I looked up to see Fran standing beside me, one freckled hand on her hip, today’s outfit a brilliantly loud orange pantsuit set off by blue Birkenstocks and a yellow scrunchie that did a poor job of containing her auburn pin-screw curls. “Hey, Fran.”

  “Come on in.” She held open the door, and by her brisk tone and pursed lips, I could sense how this was going to go.

  I hesitated, then stepped into her office. She closed the door behind me, and the click of the lock was as sharp as a guillotine blade, snapping into place.

  CHAPTER 17

  LILLIAN

  That evening, I rested my chin on the bar top of Perch, my beer so close that the curved glass gave me the viewpoint of a goldfish. “She’s such a bitch,” I said morosely. “It’s the New York in her.”

  Sam squeezed my shoulder and gently pulled me upright. “Hey, at least you weren’t fired.”

  “Might as well have. She spoke to me like I was a child.” I puffed out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know what she expects, with the garbage leads they give me. Like, what the fuck?”

  What the fuck? was Jacob’s newest catchphrase, and I was warming to it. It rolled off the tongue in a reckless fashion that appealed to my Taylor Fortwood side, which I was thinking of embracing. My coy message to David had been a smashing (Taylor seemed like she would have said smashing) success, and we’d texted back and forth a dozen times, with plans to meet for a second coffee later this week when he was back in Los Angeles.

  While secretly messaging a man was a relatively tame rebellion in the general scheme of things, it’d given me an almost giddy high, one I had needed after my bleak employee review.

  “Okay, but she isn’t firing you,” Sam confirmed, smoothing down the silver skinny tie that intersected the middle of his pale-purple dress shirt. He looked like he was ready for a photo shoot, and I had the sudden urge to run my hand through his perfectly coiffed hair and mess it up.

  “No, but they’ve been laying off people. I can’t help but feel like the whole review was just documentation for when they fire me.” I propped my sandal on the closest barstool and looked around. Okay, so Sam was properly dressed. I was the one who was sticking out, my pale-blue capri pants and cardigan great for a lackluster employee review but about three rungs short for this martini and olives crowd. I watched a woman teeter by in four-inch heels and a minidress that showed way too much thigh. Was this the type of place I’d have to frequent if I were single? Could I avoid serious effort and still lure in a keepable guy? A guy like David?

  “. . . which raises the question of contentment.” Sam paused and crooked a brow at me.

  I’d zoned out. I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about.

  “You feeling okay?” Sam peered at me with concern.

  “I’m fine.” I glanced at my watch. “I can’t stay here long. Jacob has a thing at school that I’m supposed to go to.” An assembly for parents to discuss the growing drug use problem among students. Talk about a yawn fest. “One more drink. Maybe two.”

  “Fun stuff. Is Mike meeting you there?”

  “Not sure.” I pulled a short menu from a glass holder in the middle of the bar. There were only four items, and I couldn’t pronounce any of them. “I’m starving. We should have met for dinner.”

  He ignored my dietary needs. “Have you guys discussed it any further?”

  It. The Affair. The giant prickly bomb that Mike and I were skirting with increasing efficiency.

  “No.” I brought the glass to my lips and took a long sip of the beer. “Let’s change the subject. Tell me a story about a boy.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed his lips. “That old game?”

  He used to always have stories about boys. Executives from dating sites. Stuntmen wanting ranches in the desert. Waiters who passed him their numbers on a napkin. Actors looking for one-bedroom apartments they couldn’t afford. All wooed by Sam and often with disastrous and entertaining outcomes. I hadn’t heard a story about a boy in years. But I’d take any he had, even if it was an oldie.

  “Hmm.” He tilted his head, and I wasn’t surprised he had a drawerful of heartbreak stories. I’d always been a little smitten with him myself. “Okay, remember when I had that blue convertible . . .”

  I drank my beer and listened to his story, and when the bartender paused in front of us, I ordered another. Soon, I was laughing.

  That was the great thing about Sam. He could make you forget everything.

  CHAPTER 18

  LILLIAN

  I woke up on Sam’s red sectional, a couch button biting into my cheek, my left leg hanging off the side. Rolling onto my back, I stared up at his tray ceiling and watched the sun-framed shadow of a palm frond move over the wood inlay. Why was I here? What time was it?