Chapter 2 - Five Missing Trips
There were twelve business trips on Lukas’s calendar from the previous year.
Seven made sense.
Flights.
Hotels.
Conference registrations.
Restaurant receipts with colleagues whose names I recognized.
Five did not.
I sat in a coffee shop the next morning with my laptop open and a notebook beside it.
Lukas thought I had gone to work.
Instead, I had called my manager and said I needed a personal day.
It was the first smart decision I had made since dinner.
I wrote each suspicious trip on a separate line.
March.
May.
August.
November.
January.
Then I calculated backward from Sophia’s pregnancy.
January.
My fingers went cold.
Lukas had supposedly traveled to Milwaukee that weekend for a client emergency.
There was no hotel charge.
No train ticket.
No gas receipt.
Nothing.
I opened our joint checking account.
Three months earlier, Lukas had transferred $5,000.
I remembered asking about it.
“Temporary business investment,” he had said.
The recipient was listed as SW Consulting.
S.W.
Sophia Weber.
I stared at the letters until they blurred.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
Normally I would have ignored it.
That morning, I answered everything.
“Hello?”
“Evelyn Vance?”
A woman.
“Yes.”
There was a long silence.
“This is Sophia Weber.”
The coffee shop disappeared.
The voices around me became distant noise.
My hand tightened around the phone.
“What do you want?”
She inhaled shakily.
“I need to tell you something about Lukas.”
“I already know you’re pregnant.”
Silence.
“How?”
“His family discussed it over dinner.”
“Oh my God.”
Something in her reaction surprised me.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“What?”
“Evelyn... Lukas told me you already knew.”
My heart seemed to stop.
“Knew what?”
“That we were together.”
I said nothing.
“He told me your marriage was basically over.”
“It isn't.”
“He said you were still living together temporarily.”
“He lied.”
Sophia started crying.
“He told me you couldn't have children and that you had already agreed the baby could spend most of its time with him.”
I closed my eyes.
“That is a lie too.”
“Oh God.”
“When did this start?”
“January.”
The missing trip.
I looked at my notebook.
“How?”
“He contacted me.”
“Why?”
“He said he'd been thinking about his life. About old choices. He said you two were separating.”
Every sentence sounded like a version of Lukas I knew.
Not because I had heard him tell those lies before.
Because I knew exactly how convincing he could be.
“Why are you calling me now?”
Another pause.
“Because there's something else.”
I waited.
“Yesterday his mother called me.”
My stomach turned.
“What did Ingrid say?”
“She told me not to worry about raising the baby.”
The room became very still.
Sophia continued.
“She said after the birth, they would make sure you became attached.”
Exactly what I had heard.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I wasn't giving anyone my baby.”
“What did she say?”
“She laughed.”
I gripped my coffee cup.
“Sophia, listen carefully. Did Lukas ever tell you I wanted to adopt your baby?”
“Yes.”
My hand froze.
“When?”
“About two months ago.”
I wrote it down.
“What exactly did he say?”
“That you couldn't have children, and that you were willing to accept his baby as your own because it might be your only chance to become a mother.”
The cruelty of it nearly stole my voice.
He had transformed my grief into permission.
I looked out the window.
People crossed the street carrying bags and coffee, completely unaware that my marriage was collapsing at a corner table.
“Sophia.”
“Yes?”
“I need you to answer one question honestly.”
“Okay.”
“Did you know he and I were still together when you slept with him?”
“No.”
Her answer came immediately.
Then, more quietly:
“I swear.”
I wanted to hate her.
It would have been easier.
But hate requires certainty, and I no longer trusted anything Lukas had told either of us.
“Do you have his messages?”
“Yes.”
“Don't delete anything.”
“Why?”
“Because I think we both need to know what he has been telling the other person.”
Sophia was silent.
Then she said, “You want to meet?”
I looked at the notebook.
At the transfers.
At the missing trips.
At the marriage I thought I had.
“Yes.”
We agreed on a café forty minutes away.
Before hanging up, Sophia said my name.
“Evelyn?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry.”
I didn't answer immediately.
“I don't know yet what I'm supposed to do with your apology.”
“I understand.”
“But come alone.”
“I will.”
I ended the call.
My coffee had gone cold.
I opened a fresh page in the notebook and wrote:
What Lukas told me.
Then another heading:
What Lukas told Sophia.
I was no longer trying to save my marriage.
I was trying to discover what my marriage actually was.
May you like
Three hours later, a pregnant woman walked into a quiet café carrying a phone full of messages from my husband.
And the first message she showed me proved the affair wasn't Lukas’s biggest lie.
