Hudson

“I don’t understand. Why would Lexi sell her diary on eBay, and how the hell did you wind up with it?”

Stella shook her head. “I didn’t buy that diary on eBay. Evelyn gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Evelyn? Evelyn Whitley?”

“Yes.”

“How did Evelyn get it?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“When did she give it to you?”

“For my birthday last year—so about eighteen months ago.”

I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but I knew Evelyn and Lexi didn’t speak anymore. I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I’d gone to pick up Charlie, and my ex-wife had been in a particularly bitchy mood. She’d asked me if I kept in touch with Evelyn. Of course, I didn’t. Evelyn was my sister’s friend, and not one I was too fond of to begin with.

“I just read the first page. It starts on the day we met.”

Stella looked pale. “I know.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling something between bamboozled and angry, but I tried to stay calm. “You just happened to receive my ex-wife’s diary? From the woman you were pretending to be the night we met?”

“It sounds far-fetched. I realize that. But, yes, that’s what happened. I had no idea it belonged to your ex-wife until the other night.”

“The other night? At my house when you said you had a headache and bolted?”

She nodded. “That’s when it all clicked together.”

I’d gone over that evening in my head a dozen times, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. One minute we were fine and laughing, and the next she was out the door. I shook my head. “I don’t understand, Stella.”

She sighed. “Do you think we can sit down to talk about this?”

I dragged a hand through my hair. “You sit. I need to stand.”

Hesitantly, she walked over to the chair and sat down. I started to pace in the living room. “What happened the other night at my house?”

Stella looked down and spoke to her hands. “Charlie said her full name, and I remembered it from a diary I’d read a while ago. Do you recall I told you I’d read the diary of a woman who got married at the library? That I used to go sit on the stairs and look for the people I’d read about?”

I was so confused. “You were looking for me and Lexi?”

Stella nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yeah…I guess I was.”

It seemed incredulous that my ex-wife’s diary could fall into my new girlfriend’s hands by coincidence. But even if that’s exactly what had happened, I still didn’t get why Stella got so freaked out the other day.

I held up the diary. “So this is why you’ve been avoiding me? Because you realized you’d read my ex-wife’s diary?”

She continued to avoid my eyes. “Yes.”

I paced a few times, trying to see the full puzzle, but I was missing a few pieces. “Why? If this was all some big coincidence, why not just tell me?”

Stella was quiet for a long time. That was freaking me out.

“Answer me, Stella.”

She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked completely distraught. I felt torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to scream at her for whatever the fuck craziness she had going on.

Unfortunately, the latter won out, and I barked, “Goddammit, Stella. Answer me!”

She jumped in her seat and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Because…there are things…in the diary entries.”

“What things?”

Lexi and I didn’t have a great relationship, especially at the end. But I wasn’t ever cruel to her. I hadn’t given her anything to write about that would freak Stella out.

Stella started to cry harder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I couldn’t take seeing her upset, so I walked over and kneeled in front of her. Pushing strands of wet hair from her face, I spoke quietly. “Relax. Stop crying. Nothing Lexi could have written in some diary is going to hurt me. This hurts me, seeing you so upset. What’s going on, sweetheart?”

Trying to calm her only seemed to trouble her more. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. So I pulled her in for a hug and held her until she calmed down a little. Once she did, I tilted her chin up so our eyes met. “Talk to me. What has you this upset?”

Her eyes jumped back and forth between mine, and it felt like I was watching her damn heart break.

“Lexi…” She sniffled. “She talks about having an affair.”

I blinked a few times. “Alright… Well, I didn’t know she had an affair. But I guess I can’t say I’m shocked. I caught her in lies about meaningless things over the years, and at one point I had suspected she might be seeing someone, although she always denied it. Lexi’s pretty selfish and did some shady shit, including hiding money and disappearing until late at night. Is that what’s been eating at you? You thought I’d be upset to find that out? It’s not pleasant to hear, but that part of my life is over.”

Stella closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s more.”

“Okay…what? What is it?”

“The man she was sleeping with, she wrote that he was your best friend.”

My face wrinkled. “Jack?”

“She never says his name, but she refers to him with the letter J... And...” Stella swallowed once more and took a deep breath. “Lexi doesn’t know who the father is.”

I had to be in some serious denial, because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. “Father of who? What do you mean?”

Stella’s lip trembled. “Charlie. She doesn’t know who Charlie’s father is. She was sleeping with both of you at the time she was conceived.”

***

Until a week ago, I’d felt like I had the world by the balls. I remember watching my little girl cook me dinner with the woman I was crazy about—the two of them laughing and smiling—and thinking how right everything finally felt after so long. And now…it felt like the world had me by the balls.

At first, I didn’t believe it. Not that Lexi wasn’t capable of doing that type of shit, but I couldn’t believe my best friend was. At a very minimum, that part had to be wrong. J could stand for a thousand names; there was no way Jack would do that to me.

But when I was on my third scotch, sitting at a bar where I’d met my buddy countless times, I remembered a particular Valentine’s Day years ago. I’d been up in Boston on business for a few days. My flight home had been scheduled for the evening. I’d told Lexi I’d take her out to dinner when I got home, but I’d finished up early and decided to take a midday flight and surprise her. When I walked in, Jack had been in our apartment. I remember having a fleeting uneasy feeling, but then Jack had said he’d asked Lexi to go shopping with him to buy his new girlfriend—now his wife—a gift for Valentine’s Day. He’d said she loved emeralds and remembered Lexi had a necklace with one, so he’d figured she would be able to help him pick out a quality stone for a ring. I’d honestly thought nothing more about it—this was my wife and my best friend, for fuck’s sake.