“Now listen carefully,” I said, walking into a shoe store like I was entering a courtroom. “You have one chance to tell me the truth. Where have you been since Friday morning?”
On the other end, all I heard was his breathing.
Heavy.
Nervous.
The exact breathing he used when he was lying and trying to buy time.
“Rebecca…” he began, in the low voice of a man caught with the match still in his hand. “It isn’t what you think.”
I closed my eyes and laughed without humor.
Of course.
That phrase.
A classic.
Almost a national anthem of suspicious husbands everywhere.
“I wasn’t with another woman.”
I stopped in the middle of the store.
The saleswoman, holding two boxes of heels, slowed when she saw my face.
“Well, that improves things a little,” I said coldly. “Because five seconds ago, I was absolutely sure you were in some cheap motel with a fitness instructor named Madison or Ashley.”
“There are no women here, I swear.”
“Then talk.”
Silence again.
I was about to hang up when his voice came through, cracked and uneven.
“I was with my father.”
