Page 76 of Cruel Lies

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11:09 P.M.

TODD (DO NOT ANSWER):Cali. I know it’s late. We need to talk about the company.

TODD (DO NOT ANSWER):Whoever this lawyer of yours is, call him off. I’m serious. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.

TODD (DO NOT ANSWER):Cali??

Read 11:10 P.M.

21

CALI

The next few days are good ones. I keep waiting for that to feel suspicious, but it doesn't. It just feels good.

On Monday, my company lands a new client. A logistics firm out of Jersey. They move ten thousand pallets a week and can't figure out why a slice of them keep evaporating between the dock and the truck. They read a write-up about a fraud engine that caught a supply-chain problem nobody else could see, and they called me.

They didn't know the fraud engine also caught my husband. I decided it's probably best not to tell them. Some things you keep to yourself.

I take the call in my kitchen in my socks. By the time I hang up, I've got a signed letter of intent in my inbox and a number attached to it that makes me sit down and salivate. It's not a save-the-company number, but it's definitely abuild-the-company number. I'll take it.

I give myself permission to do a happy little dance. It's a cousin of the squiggly cha-cha I did in my chair the night I finished the spreadsheet, except this time, Todd has nothing to do with it.

This time, it's just mine.

The kids are thriving, too, which I do not take for granted. Hayden has an ever-growing fixation on deep-sea creatures. Maybe he'll be a marine biologist. No one ever prepares you for how simultaneously thrilling and terrifying it is as a mother to see your kids' futures contain so many possible versions of themselves. I just hope he's happy.

Isabella has moved on from performing surgery on her stuffed narwhal to running a full veterinary hospital out of the living room. I am regularly asked to hold instruments and pay invoices.

Thank God, they're truly okay. Todd's absence, which I braced for and dreaded, isn't the nightmare I feared it would be. My mom has stepped up, and I've taken every opportunity to tell them how much I love them. They ask about him less than I expected. I think they knew a while ago that something was wrong.

Kids know. They always know more than you think.

So yeah. I'm not sure if I'm "happy," or if that's even a thing I can be anymore. But I'm doing a lot better than I was a little while ago.

It helps that, every morning, at some point before ten, my phone lights up. It's invariably the same message.

RONAN:You're beautiful, Calista Meadows.

I don't text back a thank-you. I usually send back something rude instead, because that's the game and we both know the rules. But I read each one twice. Sometimes three times, though I'd never admit it to him.

The gifts started on day two. They aren't over the top. Todd's gifts were always big and always about Todd, some watch or some trip he wanted to take that he framed as a thinghewas givingme.

Ronan's gifts are small and they're truly thoughtful, and that's a much harder trick.

A box of the pralines from a shop I mentioned once, offhand, in the middle of a completely different sentence. A book Hayden had put on his birthday list, addressed to Hayden, no note. A tiny magnetic whiteboard for the fridge to replace the magnetic mirror he stole. A packet of stickers for Isabella's veterinary hospital, the fancy type that look like real bandages.

Each one lands like a small proof that he's paying attention.

Ronan Akov is always, always listening.

When I hang up the whiteboard, I first put a doctor's appointment on it, because I am a functioning adult. Then, under the appointment, I writeStop being charmed.

I erase it before the kids can read it.

I'm at the kitchen island working when the doorbell rings. It's not the food delivery guy or the mailman. It's a young man in a black suit holding a large flat box and a smaller envelope.