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Tarek

Page 10

by Leona Windwalker

My stomach rolled, and I pressed my palm against it. So much had already happened, and now I was being told he'd had another man in his life for who knew how long. A man I'd never heard of until now, and whose identity I still didn't know. A man he'd taken on trips with him. A man he'd spent money on. Except it wasn't even our money. It had been stolen from people who trusted him.

I put my hands over my face and couldn't look at anyone for a while. My eyes burned, and I could feel tears slipping between my fingers. I thought about all the times he'd kissed me goodbye before a business trip, all the times he'd called me from a hotel room, all the times I'd told him I missed him and he'd said he missed me, too. Had any of it been true? I couldn't answer myself.

The attorney didn't rush me. When I finally lowered my hands, he continued explaining that some of the trips appeared to have been legitimate business trips, while others had been fabricated. On some of the genuine trips, the expenses had been increased to cover his boyfriend's travel and accommodations.

I stared at him, barely able to hear over the pounding of my heart. "His boyfriend," I repeated once more.

"That's what the evidence indicates."

I nodded slowly, although my throat had tightened so much that swallowing hurt. Somehow hearing it phrased that way made it worse rather than better. My husband had a boyfriend. And I knew nothing.

"Did anyone at the firm know?"

"Not as far as we can tell."

"What about Gigi?"

"She didn't know either. She told investigators she never suspected you were being deceived. She did say George Stanley could be overly familiar with Philip at times when she saw them together in the office, but she never understood it as anything more than that."

And now I knew his name. George. Philip's PA. I'd met George plenty of times. I'd always thought he was simply good at his job, maybe a little too comfortable with Philip sometimes, but nothing important enough to question. Gigi had been there every day, and she hadn't known either.

That strangely made me feel a bit better, although I wasn't sure why. Maybe because it meant I hadn't been uniquely stupid. Maybe other people had seen the same things I had and had come to the same harmless conclusions.

The attorney looked at me. "You weren't the only person who didn't know, Darren."

I swallowed hard and rubbed my damp palms against my jeans. That I wasn't should have made me feel better.

It didn't.

It only reminded me how completely Philip had managed to hide this part of his life from everyone around him. I'd spent years thinking I knew my husband. I'd never imagined he was capable of cheating on me, let alone maintaining multiple affairs and an entire second relationship without me ever realizing it.

What else don't I know?

The thought lodged itself in my head and refused to leave. I'd been asking the wrong question. The question wasn't whether Philip had done one terrible thing. The question was how much of my marriage had been built around things I had never been told.

That there was more he'd hidden became rapidly apparent. As the investigators started putting the women from our children's adoption stories into the picture, and suddenly, memories I'd carefully tucked away for years came loose.

Evan's birth mother had been an intern at the firm. I'd always thought it was simply one of those strange coincidences that brought people into our lives. She'd been young. She hadn't been able to raise her baby. She'd needed someone trustworthy to take care of him, and Philip had come home one evening and told me about her. That was how we'd become Evan's parents.

Except that wasn't the whole story. She admitted that Philip had been having an affair with her.

My hands began to shake again, so badly that I had to put them flat on the table.

No.

The next one was Matt's mother, and it was the same sorry tale. Another child whose circumstances Philip had carefully explained to me without ever telling me the truth about how he'd known her. I closed my eyes and felt a wave of nausea rise into my throat.

Two children. Two women. Two affairs.

I'd thought the similarities between the boys and Philip were nothing more than coincidence. His aunt had been right, as had his father, though they hadn't realized the import of their observations, not then. I'd even felt guilty for wondering about it. I'd looked at my own husband and thought, How could I possibly suspect him of something like that?

For the first time, I began thinking about my own health. I'd had no reason to believe there was anything wrong with me, but I had no idea what Philip had been doing, who he'd been with, or how long he'd been keeping secrets from me. I couldn't simply assume I was fine because I had trusted my husband.

My hands felt cold despite the heat in the house.

I called my doctor's office that afternoon and scheduled a full checkup and the appropriate sexual health testing. The receptionist asked if there was anything specific they needed to know, and I had to swallow before I was able to explain that my husband had apparently been having affairs I'd known nothing about.

After I hung up, I sat at the kitchen table and stared at the phone. I felt sick.