Page 50 of The Note

“Oh my god,” May said. “I can’t fucking believe this.”

“You,” Lauren said, holding up a finger to May, “back off and let Kelsey talk. Kelsey, stop it with the lies and tell us what’s going on. Everything.”

For a second, May thought Kelsey was about to cry again, which would stretch her patience past its breaking point. But instead, she took a deep breath, as if steeling herself to finally come clean. “So you remember when that guy posted a link to my Tinder account on Twitter after I told him my real name? I stopped using dating apps after that, but once the shutdown was over, I was lonely. I wanted to try again. So I decided I just wouldn’t use my real name, and I could tell them the truth if things ever got serious.”

“Why the fake number?” May asked.

“Let her speak,” Lauren admonished, “and then we can ask our questions.”

“One guy actually traced my number and it came back to the company. He figured out who I was before I was ready to tell him. And dudes can be super creepy and I don’t want some rando to have my real number forever because I texted him a few times. I could also use different area codes that way. I was contacting guys outside of Boston because I thought it was less likely they’d recognize me from news coverage of Luke’s case. I also started an Instagram profile so that if anyonegoogled Callie Martin, they’d find a real person. I just don’t post any shots of my face.”

So many lies. All those complaints on their group text thread and Zoom cocktail parties about not being able to date until Luke’s murder was solved, while Callie Martin was out there living her best life.

“Sometimes, late at night, all alone—usually with wine involved—I’d start thinking about people I used to know from high school and college, googling them and wondering what they’re doing now.”

“Nothing good ever comes from that,” Nate said playfully. May shot him a look.

“Anyway, I wound up seeing David’s comment on an Instagram post from a mutual friend from Choate. He was good-looking, so that caught my attention. Then I saw one of his own posts was a screenshot about the merger of two newspaper chains with various people congratulating him on the deal. So I googled him and liked what I found. Before I knew it, I was sending him a direct message.”

“Marnie’s ex-boyfriend?” May asked. “Seriously?”

“I swear, I had no idea. Not when I first reached out. Once we started texting and talking, I gave him a burner number with a Hartford area code and said I lived there, but we always met either in Rhode Island or on weekend trips. Once we started to get more serious, he told me about hiscollege girlfriend who drowned on a weekend off from the arts camp where she was a counselor.”

“You’ve got to be—”

“May—” Lauren was shaking her head.

“I swear on my life,” Kelsey said. “I couldn’t believe it either, but then I realized I picked him for a reason. He went to the same kinds of schools, came from a good family in the Northeast. It makes sense we’d have come from overlapping social circles. Anyway, by the time he told me, I was already wanting to drop the fake name and all the lies. We both had made it pretty clear we could see the potential for a serious relationship, and he was asking if I might consider moving to Rhode Island. And yes, I rented this house because we were planning to come here together.”

Nate stood and poked at the fire nonchalantly. He already knew all of this. It was so obvious.

“After he told me about Marnie, I felt like if there was any possible way he would understand why I had been lying to him about my name, I had to tell him the truth right then and there. So I did. He listened. Like, really, really listened.” Her voice softened at the memory, and May could tell that she was thinking more now about the loss of this man she cared for than whether May and Lauren would understand. She wiped away a tear forming in the corner of one eye before speaking again. “He said it was almost like a sign that we had both known Marnie. It just felt likethis enormous weight falling from my shoulders and I could actually imagine a new life with this person who might really love me. He was even talking about introducing me to his mother and seeing if he could work from Boston. I was so fucking happy.”

May pressed her lips together to keep herself from screaming.And yet you didn’t mention a single word about him to us.

When Lauren stood and moved to the sofa, Kelsey rested her head on Lauren’s shoulder.

“Oh sweetie,” Lauren said. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this?”

“I was embarrassed,” she said, sitting up again. “I knew what I was doing was wrong, but it was also sort of exhilarating. Like I was out there in the world pretending to be fun as fuck without all my baggage. And then I met Dave. I think I didn’t want to tell you about him too soon because you’d tell me it would never work out. I wanted to keep believing it might be real.”

“I’m so sorry you lost him,” Lauren said.

May suppressed an eye roll. She could not believe Lauren was buying any of this.

“When we were trying to figure out a time for me to come to Providence, he asked whether I wanted to have kids because that was important to him. I gave him all the details of my fertility situation, and that’s when he dumped me,” Kelsey continued, her voice cracking. “He said he shouldhave broken it off the second I told him I’d been lying about the other things. I was devastated. The future I had pictured for us was suddenly gone, poof. I think I kept the rental in the hopes that maybe he’d somehow change his mind, but nope. He basically ghosted me. And I decided the silver lining was that I had a great place for us to finally see each other in person.”

She offered May a sad smile, but May couldn’t bring herself to return it.

“I had no idea he’d come here anyway with some other woman. I was so drunk by the time I went to bed that night. I called him to say I couldn’t believe he used our vacation on someone new already. He called me out about the note, realizing it must have been me who left it. He told me we never promised each other monogamy while we were still long distance, which was true. But he had been meaning to end things completely with her because he wanted to be exclusive with me. Until the kid thing came up—that was a deal-breaker. He was his parents’ only child and the ‘bloodline,’ as he called it, had to continue. His mother would never have it any other way, and she controlled all the family money. So I folded. I told him if that was really the only sticking point, I was willing to use an egg donor and a surrogate so he could be the biological parent.”

“You called him?” May asked. “When?” This time, Lauren did not try to silence her.

“Friday night, after you crashed on the deck.”

“I heard you when I came inside. You were crying. I asked you about it the next morning and you denied the whole thing.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, placing her hands on her heart.

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