Page 174 of Summer After Summer

“Why should Colin get half the money?” Sophie says. “Not that I won’t share it with you.”

“Of course,” Colin says, patting her on the hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Ann?” I say. “What’s the explanation?”

“If you don’t want it that way, I’m sure it can be corrected,” Charlotte says, her voice faltering. “What’s the big deal? And what did you mean before about Wes and Ann?”

Wes’s leg is moving under the table now, bouncing up and down in a staccato motion.

“They’re a couple,” I say as evenly as I can. “Ann’s the one Wes cheated on me with.”

“No,” Charlotte says. “No.”

“Yes. I’m sorry …”

“I thought you didn’t know who it was?” Sophie says.

“I didn’t, not until today.”

“What made you go looking?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Charlotte moves her chair away from Ann. She’s white to the hairline. “Please tell me.”

“It was the belt.”

Ann’s hand goes to her waist, realizing her mistake.

“Olivia, if you don’t tell me what’s going on immediately, I’m going to scream.”

I tear my eyes away from Ann and focus on Charlotte. “As far as I can tell, Ann and Wes met last year. They’re on a board together, a startup that Wes got involved in after his own business went under during the pandemic.”

I’d found it by googling their names, and there it was. Wes had told me about the board, but not about Ann. But if I had to pinpoint the moment when I started questioning our relationship—him—it was shortly after he met Ann last fall. Assuming that’s when they met.

“Wes and I were … having trouble. I thought at first that it had to do with the fact that he couldn’t get his new company off the ground. He was withdrawn and secretive for months, ever since last fall. Every time I asked him about it, he claimed he was stressed, that it would pass. But then, right before I came here, I found the text messages.” I stop to gulp in some air.

Those horrible, explicit messages had turned my fears into reality in an instant.

“He’d given her a fake name in his contacts—a male name—but it was clearly a woman. There were … photographs … not her face, but other … You can imagine. In one of them, she was wearing a belt. The belt Ann’s wearing today.”

I steal a glance at her. She’s staring at me, with her eyes moving back and forth like she’s looking for an exit.

“When I found the messages, I confronted him, and he admitted the affair but said it was a one-time thing. He didn’t tell me who it was or how he met her, and I didn’t press it because I didn’t want the details. I didn’t want to know any of it. I just needed to leave.”

“You came here,” Sophie says.

“Yes. I left him. And that was a problem. It put a wrench in their plan.”

“What … what plan? What do you mean?”

“To get a large portion of the sale for himself. For them.”

“How?”

“He knew Dad was going to have to sell the house, that the bank was forcing the issue. I think that’s what gave him the idea.”

That and the fact that he was furious at me. That he wanted to punish me. Or maybe he never cared about me at all, and I’d been a mark all along.

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