Chapter 3: Stable Enough
I called my sister Kate first. She’s a paralegal in Kansas City, and she’s the one who taught me to ride a bike, so she’s who I call when I’m about to fall over.
I sent her a photo of the card, front and back.
She called me back in four minutes. “Okay. Okay. Meg. Are you sure this is about Scott?”
“It was in Lily’s bag. Which was in his car. On the night the bag was at her house.”
A long pause. “I believe you,” she said. “I’m just saying, you’ve been through a lot this year. Scott called me last week, actually. He said he was worried about you.”
My stomach dropped through the garage floor. “He called you?”
“He said you’d been… having a hard time. That he didn’t want me to worry if you said something that sounded…” She trailed off. “God. Meg. I’m sorry.”
He’d gotten there first. Of course he had.
So I stopped telling people. I started collecting.
My old AirTag, the one from my keys before I switched purses, went into the gap under the passenger seat of Scott’s car on Saturday morning while he was mowing. I wrote dates in a new notebook that lived in my desk at work, in a drawer with the patient refund forms, where Scott would never look.
On Monday, the soccer team app posted an update from Coach Mark. Boys’ U14 tournament in Wichita this weekend! I’m chaperoning, back Thursday. Jenna’s running snack duty for the girls Tuesday—thank you, Jenna!
Tuesday night, Scott texted me at 8:15. Quarterly close round two. Don’t wait up.
At 10:40, my old AirTag stopped moving on Linden Avenue. One block behind Wren Court.
I told Lily I was running to Walgreens. I drove past Linden with my headlights off for the last half block, which is a thing I never imagined I’d do in my life. Scott’s silver Accord was parked under the third streetlight, right where the card said.
I didn’t get out. I didn’t need to. Across the backyard of the corner house, I could see the Prices’ side gate. As I watched, it swung open, and a man in a light-blue shirt slipped through it and walked up to a lit kitchen door like he’d done it a hundred times.
I took eleven photos. Seven of them were blurry. Four weren’t.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel, waiting to feel something enormous. Rage, maybe. Heartbreak. What I felt instead was a strange, cold relief, like setting down a bag of groceries I’d been carrying up too many stairs. I hadn’t imagined the perfume. I hadn’t imagined Topeka. I hadn’t imagined the bag on Wren Court.
I wasn’t crazy. I was married to a liar, and those are very different problems.
I was home by 11:05. Scott walked in at 12:20 smelling like someone else’s shampoo and kissed me on the forehead. “Brutal night,” he said. “Love you.”
The next morning, I came downstairs and he was sitting at the kitchen island with his coffee, very still. In front of him, on the granite, was my old AirTag.
“Found this in my car,” he said pleasantly. “Under the seat. Weird.”
I didn’t say anything.
“So here’s the thing, Meg.” He turned the little white disc over with one finger. “I’ve talked to Dr. Patel’s office about getting you in more often. I talked to Kate. I talked to your boss about whether you might need some time off.”
“You called my boss?”
“Because I’m worried.” He looked up at me over his glasses, calm as a bank lobby. “And yesterday, I talked to a lawyer, Meg. About Lily. About whether you’re stable enough.”
