PART 2
But listening to Lauren, I felt no uncertainty.
I knew exactly what kind of person I was dealing with.
Still, I didn’t want to confront her over the phone.
I wanted her sitting in front of me.
And I wanted Kyle there too.
“You know what?” I said.
“What?”
“Come to dinner tomorrow night.”
She sounded surprised.
“Really?”
“Family dinner. Seven o’clock.”
Her tone instantly brightened.
“Sure.”
“Wear something nice.”
She agreed before she had time to wonder why I had suddenly become so friendly.
After we hung up, I stared at Lauren’s name on my phone.
Then another thought hit me.
Five thousand dollars.
That exact amount had come up before.
Six months earlier.
With Ethan.
My boyfriend.
And his ex-fiancée.
Suddenly, I remembered something I had tried very hard to forget.
A photograph.
Part of a woman’s face.
And a small mole beneath one eye.
Lauren had a mole in almost exactly the same place.
No.
That was ridiculous.
It had to be a coincidence.
At least, that was what I wanted to believe.
But this time, I wasn’t willing to ignore the feeling.
To explain why, I have to go back six months.
I met Ethan in the parking lot of a hardware store.
I was trying to load a large box fan into my trunk when a man behind me started honking aggressively and yelling for me to hurry up.
My hands began shaking.
Before I could respond, a calm voice came from beside me.
“She’s almost finished. Give her a second.”
The man standing nearby didn’t yell back.
He didn’t threaten anyone.
He simply remained there until the impatient driver finally gave up and pulled away.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I told him.
“I know.”
That was Ethan.
We started talking.
When he asked for my number, I gave it to him before I could overthink the decision.
After my divorce, that was unusual for me.
I questioned everything.
Every decision.
Every person.
But something about Ethan felt safe.
We started seeing each other once or twice a week.
Mostly quiet dinners.
Sometimes evenings at his apartment.
I didn’t tell my family immediately.
My divorce had become public entertainment for everyone around me.
Too many opinions.
Too many questions.
Too many relatives choosing sides.
This time, I wanted my relationship to belong only to me for a little while.
Ethan became my private happiness.
Still, every so often, the old doubt returned.
How well did I really know him?
One evening, while we were having wine in his kitchen, I asked him to tell me something personal.
He became quiet.
Then he said,
“I was engaged once.”
“What happened?”
His expression hardened.
“She was terrible.”
He hesitated.
“About two months before the wedding, she asked me for five thousand dollars.”
My attention sharpened.
“For what?”
“She said she owed an old debt. Then the explanation kept changing.”
He shook his head.
“I don’t like talking about her.”
I didn’t push.
Later that night, Ethan went to shower.
While I was waiting, I noticed an old manila folder on his desk.
A photograph was sticking halfway out.
I could see only part of a woman’s face.
Dark hair.
One eye.
And a small mole just beneath it.
For a moment, I nearly pulled the photograph out.
Then I stopped myself.
My ex-husband had spent years calling me paranoid whenever I noticed something suspicious.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t become someone who searched through another person’s belongings just because fear told me to.
So I left it alone.
