“A bit, but then he fell asleep. I took note of where I was at in the book. I’ll text it to you so you can find it on your Kindle.”
“Cool, thanks.”
Blaise got her phone out and sent Maude the info. “There you go.”
Maude checked her screen. “Got it.” She smiled at Blaise. “This is nice, isn’t it? Not that he’s here. Helping, I mean.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’m going to head in. I’ll text later and let you all know how it went.”
“Sounds good.” Blaise floated toward the exit, feeling better than she had in a while.
Chapter Seventeen
Cece sat in the spare room, at the desk that was supposed to have been transported to the loft space. It had never made it up there and probably never would. Such was the way of things.
She was thankful she wasn’t needed at the hospital just yet. As much as she was willing to go, she very much wanted to make some progress looking into Jim. The need to find out what he was doing to Natalie burned within Cece like a pit of lava.
If he was cheating on Nat, Cece would never forgive him. Her daughter and grandson deserved better. And if Natalie needed money for a divorce attorney, Cece would do whatever she could to help out.
She’d gone straight to bed after book club last night, settling in with the new book and reading far later than she’d meant to, but the book was good. Paige had chosen well. This morning, she’d gotten involved helping Paige figure out a visitation schedule for Lester.
Now that all of that was taken care of, it was time to return her attention to her son-in-law. She hadn’t made much progress so far. None of the accounts Natalie had given her showedanything suspicious, but she was pleased to see they were doing so well.
With Peanut curled up on the desk next to the laptop, Cece started by doing a basic Google search, which didn’t really result in anything new. She went through three pages of articles, however, just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. Articles about him in work-related newsletters, old mentions of him from his college days when he’d played baseball, photos he’d been tagged in from high school reunions.
Next she went to Facebook, where finding him was easy because they were friends. She looked through his posts, going back a full year, and found nothing suspicious. But then, it wasn’t like she’d expected him to post a picture with a strange woman and announce her to the world as his new girlfriend.
Jim was, unfortunately, a smart man.
If he was cheating, which Cece really couldn’t make a judgment call about yet, he would be careful. He’d hide his tracks.
She reached over and absentmindedly scratched Peanut’s back. Peanut responded by curling up tighter and tipping her head upside down.
Cece smiled. She kept a legal pad beside her computer and made notes when she found anything she thought might be useful. Dates he’d been at conferences and the names of those conferences. He never posted about being away on Facebook because, as he’d said many times, he didn’t want anyone to know his wife and son were home alone.
For that, Cece gave Jim credit. On paper, he wasn’t the worst husband in the world. He was a good provider, maybe better than Cece had realized, and he went to Tyler’s soccer games whenever he was able. He’d even stepped in for one game when the coach had been called out for a family emergency.
He did enough that Cece wanted to believe in him. But she knew what men were capable of. That they were often weak creatures easily led astray by a pretty face and the right words.
She didn’t want to find out anything bad about him, but her daughter deserved an answer. As Cece searched, she did her best to keep her own bias out of it. Having been cheated on, and betrayed, and left for reasons she didn’t think justified leaving, she certainly had bitterness toward any man who’d willingly break up his family.
Maybe some of her bitterness came from facing cancer alone, too. Yes, she’d had Natalie, but Nat had had Tyler to look after and Cece hadn’t wanted to take her away from her son. For Natalie’s sake, Cece had downplayed the severity of things and not once used the word cancer.
But Cece’s ex-husband deserved all the anger she could heap on him. Cheating was disgusting.
Hopefully, there was some other reason for Jim being so absent lately.
She did a new search on Facebook for variations of Jim’s name: J Frett, James Frett, JA Frett (Alan being his middle name). She even looked for him with the last name Simons, which was his mother’s maiden name, but none of the results were him.
Her frustration was growing, but she reminded herself that again, he was a smart man, and if he was having an affair, he wasn’t going to broadcast it.
Next, she went through the various dating apps. There were probably new ones out there since she’d found her ex-husband on one, but she could research those later. She scrolled through, using the fake accounts she’d set up and had never deleted.
Nothing. So far, Jim was looking good. But Cece had a gut feeling that he’d be much more sly about his activities than her own cheating ex.
She went to his company’s website and looked through the employees at his branch. That took nearly an hour. There were a lot of employees and a lot of bios to read. Three of them stuck out. Pretty, younger women, and one who wasn’t that pretty, but was well put together. All of them were smart and ambitious. The kind who might see an upper management guy like Jim as a steppingstone.
