He’d leave rooms to take calls.
He started going to the gym at weird hours.
9:30 on a Tuesday night.
7:00 in the morning on a Saturday, when he usually slept until 10:00.
He changed his phone passcode three times in 2 months.
I only knew that because Lily had tried to play a game on his phone at Thanksgiving, and he’d snatched it away from her so fast you’d think it was a loaded weapon.
Then there was the thing at Christmas.
I’d gone to pick up my jacket from the guest room at Paige and Todd’s house, and Todd’s Apple Watch was sitting on the dresser.
A notification popped up.
It was a text from someone saved as “Brett from work” that said, “Last night was amazing. Same hotel next week.”
Now look, I’m not naive enough to think every suspicious text is proof of an affair.
Maybe Brett from work is his actual coworker named Brett, and they were talking about a work conference.
But combined with everything else, it painted a picture I couldn’t ignore.
But I didn’t have proof.
Not real proof.
And in the weeks after that dinner, I started to wonder if I’d just blown up my family over a suspicion.
The guilt was suffocating.
I’d wake up at 3:00 in the morning and stare at the ceiling, thinking about Paige’s face when she started crying.
Thinking about my niece Lily, who had nothing to do with any of this.
Thinking about whether I’d just turned myself into the family villain because I couldn’t handle being called a loser.
The isolation hit fast.
My mom stopped calling.
My dad never started.
Paige blocked me on everything within a week.
The only person who still talked to me was Caleb.
And even he was careful about it.
Like he was trying to maintain diplomatic relations between two warring countries.
I threw myself into work.
Not because I was trying to be inspirational.
Because I had literally nothing else.
My social life had been built around family obligations, and now those were gone.
So, I worked.
I took on extra projects.
I stayed late.
I volunteered for the kind of assignments nobody else wanted.
The messy audits, the difficult clients, the systems that were held together with duct tape and prayers.
And something happened that I wasn’t expecting.
I got really, really good at my job.
Not that I was bad before.
But there’s a difference between doing your work and throwing yourself into it with nothing else to lose.
Within 2 months, I’d earned a reputation at Alder Creek as the guy who could untangle anything.
My boss, a woman named Clare, who looked like a librarian but negotiated like a lawyer, started putting me on the firm’s highest-profile accounts.
By February, I’d been promoted.
Not a small promotion, either.
I was brought on as a senior consultant with a team of four people under me and a salary that would have made Todd choke on his bourbon.
I didn’t tell anyone in my family.
There was nobody to tell.
Around that same time, I reconnected with an old college friend named Drew.
We drifted apart after graduation the way people do, but he’d moved to Richmond for a job, and we started grabbing beers on Friday nights.
Drew was one of those people who tells you the truth whether you want to hear it or not, which is exactly what I needed.
One night, about 3 months after the dinner, I told Drew everything.
The whole story.
Todd’s comments.
My dad laughing.
What I’d said.
The fallout.
Drew listened without interrupting, which for him was practically a miracle.
When I finished, he took a long sip of his beer and said, “Okay, two things. One, Todd sounds like a tool. Two, you can’t just throw a grenade at dinner and walk away. If you’ve got something on this guy, you owe it to your sister to actually find out the truth. Not for revenge. For her.”
He was right.
And I hated that he was right because it meant I had more work to do.
I started being more intentional about what I already knew.
I wasn’t going to stalk Todd or hire a private investigator or do anything that would end up making me look like the unhinged brother.
But I was going to pay attention.
And the universe, as it sometimes does when you start paying attention, started handing me information.
The first thing that happened was Caleb called me in March.
He was being cautious, but he told me something that made my stomach drop.
He’d been at my parents’ house for Sunday dinner, the dinners I was no longer invited to, and Todd had shown up late.
When Paige asked where he’d been, Todd said he’d been at a client meeting.