Page 44 of Rich Little Liars

I nod, not trusting my voice.

After he leaves, I stand in the empty hallway and try to work out how much longer I can keep this up. How many more nights of no sleep and phantom intruders and police visits before everything falls apart completely.

Not long, probably.

But for now, I have Richard’s kiss on my forehead and his promise that he’s not going anywhere.

It’s not much.

But it’s all I have.

15

THEN

I wasn’t supposed to be home.

That’s the detail I keep circling back to later, when I’m trying to work out how much of what happened was planned and how much was just terrible luck. I wasn’t supposed to finish the meeting early. Wasn’t supposed to cancel my afternoon plans. Wasn’t supposed to walk through my own front door at two in the afternoon on a Tuesday.

But the client had rescheduled at the last minute – some emergency on their end – and rather than sit in a coffee shop for three hours pretending to work, I’d decided to just come home. Maybe get some actual work done in my office or have a quiet afternoon to myself for once, without Roxanne appearing at my door with pastries and questions.

The house was silent when I walked in. No music. No voices. No signs of life. Daniel’s car was in the driveway – he’d mentioned working from home today – but I figured he must be upstairs in his study, deep in spreadsheets or conference calls or whatever it was he did all day that kept him so distant lately.

I set my bag down in the hallway and kicked off my shoes. The quiet felt luxurious after weeks of Roxanne’s constant presence. Space to breathe. Space to live my life.

That’s when I heard it.

Soft at first. Just a sound that didn’t quite belong. A murmur, maybe. Or a laugh. Coming from upstairs. From the direction of our bedroom.

My stomach tightened.

It’s nothing, I told myself. Daniel’s on a call. Or watching something on his laptop.

But I headed towards the stairs anyway. Moving quietly without quite knowing why. Without wanting to examine why I felt the need for stealth in my own house. The murmur came again as I climbed. Clearer now. Definitely a voice. Definitely not Daniel’s. Higher. Feminine.

My heart was hammering by the time I reached the landing.

The bedroom door was ajar. Just slightly. Enough to see a sliver of the room beyond. Enough to hear properly. Roxanne’s voice. Soft and warm and intimate.

‘You work too hard. You need to relax more.’

Then Daniel, his laugh low and familiar. ‘Is that your medical assessment?’

‘I’m very concerned about your stress levels.’

More laughter. The sound of it turned my stomach because I knew that laugh. Knew the quality it had when Daniel was flirting. When he was interested and was moving towards something he wanted.

I should have walked away, gone back downstairs. Slammed the front door and announced my presence loudly enough to give them time to arrange themselves into something innocent.

Instead, I pushed open the door.

They were on the bed.

Not naked. Not quite. But close enough that there was no mistaking what was happening. What had been about to happen. Roxanne in her jeans and bra, Daniel shirtless, both of them frozen in the moment between kissing and whatever came next.

For a second, nobody moved.

We just stared at each other across the space of my bedroom – the room I shared with my husband, the bed we’d slept in for five years, now occupied by him and her and the betrayal that hung between all of us.