Chapter 2 - The phone call neither of them wanted answered
Ryan came through the gate fast.
He stopped when he saw the pool.
Brooke.
Ethan.
Me holding an armful of clothes.
Nobody needed an explanation.
His face changed slowly.
Not rage at first.
Recognition.
Like he had suspected something long before this afternoon.
Brooke whispered:
“Ryan…”
He did not look at her.
His eyes stayed on Ethan.
“How long?”
Ethan climbed halfway toward the steps, then stopped when he remembered he had nothing dry to put on.
“This isn’t what it looks like.”
I actually laughed.
Ryan looked at me.
“You caught them?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
He nodded once.
Then his eyes moved to Brooke’s phone.
“Check her messages.”
Brooke immediately panicked.
“No.”
That single word told me more than any confession.
I picked up the phone.
I did not unlock it.
I had no right to search her private device just because she betrayed her husband in my backyard.
But Ethan’s phone was different.
We shared the household account, and it had been repeatedly syncing photos and messages to our jointly owned home tablet.
Months earlier, I had ignored odd notifications because I assumed they were work-related.
Now my own phone began buzzing.
The emergency alarm had triggered the home system.
That system also opened a timeline of recently active household devices.
Ethan’s phone appeared.
One missed call.
Then another.
The caller was not Brooke.
It was my sister, Natalie.
I froze.
Ethan saw my face.
“Lauren.”
That tone again.
Warning disguised as concern.
Ryan noticed.
“Who is it?”
I answered Ethan’s phone.
My sister spoke before I said anything.
“Did she find you?”
Silence.
Then:
“Ethan?”
My stomach turned.
“Natalie.”
The line went dead.
Ethan closed his eyes.
Brooke stared at him.
Even she looked confused.
I lowered the phone.
“What exactly did you tell my sister?”
He stepped out of the pool and grabbed a towel from a chair.
“Nothing.”
Ryan laughed bitterly.
“You’re having affairs with both families now?”
Brooke snapped toward Ethan.
“Both?”
He looked at her.
That was enough.
The pool had not exposed one affair.
It exposed a man who had compartmentalized everyone.
Brooke thought she was special.
Apparently so had Natalie.
Then my phone buzzed again.
A security notification.
The backyard camera had captured activity over the previous six months.
Motion clips.
Dates.
Times.
Automatically archived.
I opened the timeline.
Brooke entered our side gate seventeen times.
Natalie entered eleven.
Always when I was away.
But one third person appeared more often than either of them.
A man I did not recognize.
He came through our back door late at night.
Ethan always let him in.
And every visit lasted less than twenty minutes.
Ryan leaned over my shoulder.
His face drained.
“I know him.”
“Who?”
Ryan looked at Ethan.
May you like
“My business partner.”
Cliffhanger: The backyard affair was only camouflage—Ethan had also been secretly meeting Ryan’s business partner, tying both marriages to something far more serious than cheating.
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