Ethan Saxman was Aubrey’s husband, so Griff and Kate had met him on several occasions before moving back to town. But mostly, they’d kept their distance from the Belle River crowd. Kate hated the place. It reminded her too much of that unfortunate business at the bridge, and as much as Belle River itself reminded her, her freshman-year roommates reminded her even more. Kate had only seen her ex-roommates for the occasional weekend or birthday or holiday here and there over the years, and even that was at their instigation. If Aubrey and Jenny hadn’t pursued Kate, the connection would have been lost. Griff himself was in close communication with old chums from his frat, as well as a number of other Carlisle men from his graduating class. He liked having a history with people. Kate didn’t. It made her feel too exposed. He understood that. He accepted her idiosyncrasies.
When they moved back to Belle River—under a cloud of suspicion, in dire straits financially, in need of friends—Ethan Saxman was the shiny new toy that distracted Kate from her troubles. They saw him again for the first time in several years in some mediocre restaurant when the three couples met for dinner early in the summer. The tables were too close together; it was hot and noisy and unpleasant. Ethan stood up and moved his chair to make room for Kate at the table. Griff watched the whole thing happen. She looked at him, he smiled at her—done. The look in Kate’s eyes, the timbre of her voice as they talked to each other. Ethan was tall and dark, with those thick, girlish lips, like Lucas Arsenault had. Kate went for that sort of thing—tall, dark, and obvious, with an ostentatious sex appeal. Griff was not as tall, he was blond, his looks were more refined. Women still followed him with their eyes when he walked into a room. Women did; not Kate. You’d think physical appearance wouldn’t matter after a lifetime of devotion, but people were shallow. Kate was the shallowest of all.
Griff followed the details of the affair like he was hate-watching some awful, addictive TV show. Kate refused to learn about technology or be bothered paying bills, so their various accounts were set up and handled by Griff. They shared an Apple account, which meant that he could set her texts to show up on his iPhone and she didn’t even realize it. They shared an Uber account, so he could see where the cars took her. And they shared their one remaining credit card, so he saw every charge she made. No need to pay for a private detective when he could follow her with the swipe of a fingertip. He knew which hotel Kate frequented with her lover. A motel really, a seedy place called the Pinetree Inn, out on Route 17 in Mill Junction where they hoped to escape prying eyes from Belle River. Kate was kind enough to leave Griff the car on these occasions. This was because the first time she stayed out all night with her new beau, Griff had been hesitant to confront her directly, so he threw a fit about being stranded with no ride. Kate took that to heart, and never made that mistake again, which meant Griff had the BMW to drive out to Mill Junction and spy on them. Half the time they didn’t bother closing the blinds. Griff saw them together. He saw what they did.
Griff recently realized, from reading Kate’s texts, that she was pressuring Ethan to leave his wife. He couldn’t tell if she’d told Ethan yet that she was pregnant. (Indeed, Griff had no official confirmation that Kate actually was pregnant, beyond his own observations. She certainly hadn’t talked to him about it.) The fact that Ethan had three children with another woman meant nothing to Kate, for whom other people’s needs didn’t register. The interesting thing was that Ethan was not on board with Kate’s plan. In his texts, Ethan seemed to be hesitating, backing off, even hinting at ending things. And it might have gone that way, had Griff not intervened and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
Sitting in the cold jail cell, Griff had plenty of time to relive the confrontation in all its awfulness. It was last Thursday night around nine o’clock, cold and windy with a chance of rain. Griff sat drinking in the gloomy kitchen, wondering if Kate was coming home. The clock on the wall ticked loudly, and the bottle of vodka was almost empty. Griff was just about to get up and raid the pantry for another bottle when his phone buzzed with the duplicate of Kate’s text to Ethan Saxman.
“I decided to file,” Kate wrote. “I know you said not to but I have to. I want to explain so meet me at Pinetree ASAP.”
Then nothing.
Five minutes later, Kate texted her lover again. “Babe r u coming? Please answer. So important.”
Poor Kate was feeling insecure. Had Saxman ditched her already? Aww, how sad. Griff took a swig straight from the bottle and waited, but his stomach felt funny. One word in her text had leaped out, and it troubled him. File. What did she mean, file?
“Can’t get away tonight. Don’t do anything until we talk,” Ethan replied, several minutes later.
“No, too important,” Kate texted back almost instantly. “Have to tell you something big. You’ll understand once you know.”
“I can meet tomorrow but don’t do anything yet,” Saxman texted back.
Don’t do what? What the hell were they talking about?
“Lawyer says I need to file in the morning bc $. At Pinetree now pls come!!” Kate wrote.
Understanding broke over Griff like a tidal wave. “File” meant file for divorce. Kate was about to reveal to her lover that she was pregnant with his child, and planned to file for divorce from Griff the next morning. Kate wasn’t simply having another in a long string of affairs. She was leaving Griff—correction, divorcing him, on a timeline designed to deprive him of his fair share of her trust fund money. Griff and Kate had been talking for months about what to do with that money when it came in, which would be on the day of her fortieth birthday. He had a plan for a fresh start for them, both of them, together, far away from the pernicious influence of Ethan Saxman. In the Keys, or maybe the Virgin Islands, captaining a little boat, booking fishing charters. He could earn their keep, he was confident of that. Griff was excited about the plan but Kate refused to commit to it. Maybe, let’s wait and see, she’d say. That had obviously been a lie, a stall, a scam. She never had any intention of going away with him. She was stringing him along while she made other plans. Griff lavished years of his life and millions of his father’s fortune on Kate, and this was how she repaid him.
Griff hoisted the vodka bottle and discovered that it was empty. The car keys sat in the middle of the table where Kate had left them. His next step unfolded with perfect logic. There was no thought process involved. He simply picked up the keys and walked out the front door. He didn’t even stop to get his wallet.
He didn’t remember driving to the motel, but sometime later, Griff was there, parked in his usual spot. He liked to hide at the far side of the lot, next to the Dumpster, beyond where the streetlights reached, and watch without being seen. The Pinetree Inn was the sort of single-story, low-rise dump where the rooms opened directly onto the parking lot. Each room had a different-colored door. About half of the spaces were taken tonight, but nobody had gone in or out recently. Saxman’s car was parked in front of the cheerful yellow door to room 21. The blinds were closed, so Griff used his imagination to visualize what they were doing in there.