The message could have come from Nathan.
It had the right tone — controlled, warning, just vague enough to deny later.
But it could also have come from Cassandra.
Or from someone acting on behalf of one of them.
Either way, someone had my number and had been watching closely enough to send that message within minutes of me leaving the parking lot.
I drove home.
The apartment Nathan and I shared was a two-bedroom on the fourth floor of a building that had seemed temporary when we first moved in and had somehow become permanent.
I had painted the kitchen myself.
I had hung the curtains.
I had arranged the bookshelves.
I walked through the door and stood in the hallway for a moment, looking at it all.
Then I went to the desk in the second bedroom, the room Nathan had used as a study, and I started opening drawers.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.
I told myself I was looking for anything that confirmed what Daniel had shown me, anything that added to the picture.
But the truth was simpler than that.
I was looking for the version of my life that had been running parallel to the one I thought I was living.
I found it in the bottom drawer, beneath a folder of old lecture notes.
A second phone.
Prepaid.
Fully charged.
I turned it on.
It was password protected, but the screen lit up with a notification before it locked — a missed call from a contact listed only as C.
I set it on the desk.
I called Daniel.
“He has a second phone,” I said when he picked up.
A pause.
“Where did you find it?”
“Bottom desk drawer.
It’s locked but there’s a missed call from someone listed as C.”
“Cassandra.”
“Most likely.” I looked at the phone on the desk.
“Daniel, I need a lawyer.
Not Monday.
Tomorrow.”
“It’s Saturday tomorrow.”
“Then I need one who works Saturdays.”
Another pause.
“My sister is a family law attorney.
She’s good.
She’s handled cases like this before.”
