Chapter 2 - Brooke Had Been Living In Amanda’s House For Weeks At A Time
The first question Amanda asked was not whether Richard had slept with Brooke.
She already knew.
A wife does not need laboratory confirmation when another woman stands inside her living room, with her son’s toys scattered around the fireplace and her child behaving like the house belongs to him, while her husband orders the wife not to touch that child.
Amanda looked around.
Really looked.
A gray sweatshirt she had never bought hung over the back of the sofa.
A pair of boys’ sneakers, far too large for Ethan, sat near the mudroom entrance.
A gaming controller lay beside the fireplace.
There were two unfamiliar juice boxes on the coffee table and a red lipstick mark on a wineglass by Richard’s chair.
These were not visitors.
They had been comfortable here.
“How long?” Amanda asked.
Richard started with the coward’s answer.
“It isn’t what you think.”
Amanda almost laughed again.
Ethan pressed himself harder into her leg.
She looked down and saw something even worse than fear.
Recognition.
Her son already knew these people.
“Ethan,” she said softly, “has Tyler been here before?”
Richard cut in immediately. “Don’t question him right now.”
Amanda looked up so sharply that he stopped.
Ethan nodded.
“How many times?”
The little boy shrugged, crying again.
“When you go on airplane trips.”
Amanda’s stomach dropped.
She traveled often for work—usually three or four days at a time, sometimes a week.
Richard had always told her Ethan remained home with him and the nanny rotation. He sent photos. Bedtime pictures. Pancake mornings. Videos of Ethan playing with blocks.
Apparently, between those photos, Brooke and Tyler had been living there too.
Brooke recovered enough from the slap to speak.
“We weren’t living here.”
Amanda turned toward her.
Brooke added, “We stayed over sometimes.”
“How sometimes?”
Brooke looked toward Richard.
That glance answered more than the words.
Amanda realized her house had become the meeting place for her husband’s second life whenever the woman paying for most of it was conveniently traveling.
May you like
And Ethan had been trapped in the middle.
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