PART 3
His hand shot forward.
“Actually, I think I made a mistake.”
I kept my hand on the folder.
“What kind of mistake?”
He swallowed.
“I thought you were somebody else.”
I almost laughed.
“Somebody else who looks exactly like your wife?”
Ashley froze.
Dale’s eyes snapped toward her.
“Ashley, wait outside.”
She didn’t move.
“Why?”
“Just go sit in the truck.”
Her voice sharpened.
“Dale, what’s happening?”
“Nothing.”
I looked at her.
Then at him.
“Nothing?”
Dale stared at me.
I opened the folder.
The first page was a transfer authorization.
The second was a refinancing document.
The third had my name printed clearly across the top.
CAROL ANN HARRIS.
My husband’s signature appeared at the bottom.
It looked like mine.
Almost.
But not quite.
I had spent twenty-six years watching Dale sign checks, birthday cards, tax returns, invoices, mortgage documents, and Christmas receipts.
I knew his handwriting better than I knew the lines on my own face.
And this signature was his.
Not mine.
“Interesting,” I said.
Dale’s jaw tightened.
“What?”
“You signed my name.”
He stepped closer.
“Carol, don’t make this bigger than it is.”
I looked up.
“Bigger than what?”
He lowered his voice.
“This is a business matter.”
“No.”
I tapped the paper.
“This is my name.”
Ashley stepped closer.
“What is she talking about?”
Dale turned toward her.
“Go outside.”
“No.”
The word came from Ashley this time.
And something about the way she said it made me realize she was finally beginning to understand that the story she’d been telling me every Thursday had another woman standing at the center of it.
Me.
She looked at me.
Then at the folder.
Then at Dale.
“Miss C?”
I nodded.
“Yes.”
Her lips parted.
“You’re…”
“My wife?” Dale finished.
Ashley stared at him.
“You told me she was sixty-five.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Ashley looked embarrassed.
“You told me she had moved to Florida.”
Dale closed his eyes.
“You told me she knew about us.”
I looked at Ashley.
“I did not.”
Silence.
Ashley took one step backward.
Then another.
Her voice became barely audible.
“You told me you were separated.”
Dale said nothing.
She laughed once.
It wasn’t a happy laugh.
It was the sound someone makes when reality is so ugly that their mind refuses to accept it.
“You told me you had filed.”
Still nothing.
Ashley looked at me.
“How long?”
“Twenty-six years.”
Her eyes widened.
“No.”
I nodded.
“Twenty-six.”
She looked at Dale again.
He finally spoke.
“Ashley, listen to me.”
She held up her hand.
“No.”
“Ashley—”
“No.”
Her voice broke.
“You told me your wife was living with her sister.”
I said quietly, “My sister lives in Atlanta.”
Ashley turned toward me.
“She’s real?”
“Yes.”
“She knows?”
“My sister knows I’m married.”
Ashley looked sick.
Then her eyes fell on the folder again.
“What is that?”
I turned the document around so she could see it.
“Apparently, your boyfriend wanted to put approximately four hundred thousand dollars of business debt into my name.”
Ashley stared.
“What?”
Dale stepped forward.
“That’s not what it is.”
I pointed to the second page.
“Equipment loans.”
Third page.
“Back taxes.”
Fourth page.
“Personal guarantee.”
Then I looked at him.
“And this one transfers the boat account.”
Ashley looked at him.
“The boat account?”
Dale’s expression hardened.
“You don’t understand business.”
She stared at him.
“You told me that account was ours.”
“It is.”
“You said it had four hundred thousand dollars.”
“It fluctuates.”
“So does your story.”
Dale’s face turned red.
I had never seen him look so frightened.
Not even when the roof collapsed on one of his biggest job sites eight years earlier.
He had always been the man who knew what to do.
The man who had an answer.
The man who told me not to worry.
Now he had nothing.
Except lies.
And he had run out of places to put them.
From behind the curtain came a cough.
Patrice stepped into view.
Dale looked at her.
Then at me.
“Who is that?”
I smiled.
“My attorney.”
His face went completely pale.
Patrice held up her phone.
“Hello, Mr. Harris.”
Dale stared.
“You recorded me?”
“I recorded nothing that wasn’t said in a public-facing business conversation,” she replied calmly. “But I suggest you stop talking until you’ve spoken with your own counsel.”
Dale looked at me.
“You planned this.”
I shook my head.
“No.”
I pushed the folder toward him.
“You planned this.”
He didn’t touch it.
Patrice walked over.
“Carol, don’t give him the original.”
I immediately pulled it back.
Dale’s eyes narrowed.
“Carol, we’re married.”
I looked at him.
“That sentence used to mean something.”
He flinched.
Ashley was crying now.
Not loudly.
Just tears rolling down her cheeks while she stared at the man she’d believed she was going to marry.
“Did you ever love me?” she whispered.
Dale looked at her.
“Ashley…”
“Don’t.”
She wiped her face.
“Just answer me.”
He said nothing.
She nodded slowly.
“That answers it.”
Then she looked at me.
“I am so sorry.”
I believed her.
Because for the first time since she had entered my salon months earlier, she wasn’t trying to win anything.
