Our Wicked Lies by Gledé Kabongo (story read aloud TXT) 📗

it with beautiful things. Fresh flowers twice a week, scented candles, a gorgeous antique sofa, a bookshelf with mostly hardback first editions, photos of her and Eliot at glamorous parties, along with travel and vacation shots. But it was also where she kept old photo albums with pictures of life with her mother, after her dad walked out. Looking at them broke her heart, but they were her most cherished possessions.

Alicia tried to log in to the computer and failed. She’d forgotten the password Eliot had given her a while back. She thought about it for a minute and recalled it was his mother’s maiden name, Scott, in combination with the date and year he was accepted into Harvard Law.

She tried it, and it worked. She returned to the University of Massachusetts website, where she had been before her computer glitched. She read the requirements for transfer students and began creating an account but became stumped by some of the form’s requirements. She couldn’t find the answers on the website, so it was probably best to email the admissions office first. She didn’t want to mess up her chances for a new kind of future before it had even begun.

She clicked on the mail icon. Annoyingly, Eliot had forgotten to log out of his email. She’d have to switch accounts. However, as she tried to find the settings icon, she noticed something strange about the inbox. It was almost empty. Eliot valued efficiency and cleaning out his inbox was the kind of thing he would do, but what was weird was the number of emails in his draft folder to the left of the screen—seventeen in all.

Why hadn’t he sent those messages? It was unlike Eliot to keep such a tidy inbox but not do the same to his drafts folder.

Alicia swatted away the troublesome thought. It was nothing. Her anxious brain was playing tricks on her. If he had something to hide, he would have come up with some plausible excuse why she couldn’t borrow his computer. He hadn’t done that. Instead, he had willingly turned over his laptop without a second thought.

She squirmed in her seat, unable to get comfortable. If he had nothing to hide, there would be no harm in looking in the folder. There wouldn’t be anything upsetting in it, right?

Alicia dragged the mouse to the drafts folder and hesitated. Her brain issued a silent scream, egging her on.

She clicked. To her surprise, none of the messages had a subject line. Before she lost her nerve, she scrolled to the top of the page, double clicked on the most recent message, and read it.

A vicious chill hit her at the core.

CHAPTER 17

Alicia covered her mouth to suppress the wounded scream threatening to burst out of her. She wanted to run away, erase what she had just seen. But her body wouldn’t cooperate. Her muscles froze. Oxygen fled her brain. Her breath caught. She couldn’t breathe properly. Air reached her lungs in short, anguished bursts.

It was right there, in black and white. The anonymous notes were correct. Eliot and another woman. A woman who had just exposed a major crack in Alicia’s marriage. No. Scratch that. A 9.0-type earthquake on the Richter Scale.

To: Eliot Gray

From: Empress Faith

Subject: Our future

I’m tired of sharing you with her. I love you. I would do anything for you. Doesn’t that count for something?

From: Eliot Gray

To: Empress Faith

Re: Our future

This is getting tiresome, Faith. We agreed. No emotional attachments.

From: Empress Faith

To: Eliot Gray

Re: Our future

Oh. I get it. She’s too good to do the things you do with me. Your precious Alicia. It’s not fair. Maybe we should call things off.

From: Eliot Gray

To: Empress Faith

Re: Our future

You’re a grown woman, not a child. Act like it. Stop calling me on my personal cell phone.

From: Empress Faith

To: Eliot Gray

Re: Our future

Maybe I should tell Alicia all the crazy things we do in bed. What you like, how you like it…

From: Eliot Gray

To: Empress Faith

Re: Our future

Do that, and I’ll make you regret it.

Time ceased to exist. She didn’t know how long she had been staring at the screen, absorbing every word of the exchange, or when tears began to flow down her cheeks and soaked her chest. The intimate back and forth was one long draft message that was never sent.

Despite the evidence staring her in the face, a small part of her, deep in the crevices of her mind, hoped that this was a mistake. It just was a misunderstanding. Her interpretation was wrong. This was clearly someone playing a cruel game. This couldn’t be the truth. Her loving, brilliant husband wasn’t cheating on her.

Kat’s warning came roaring back again: People who go looking for trouble usually find it.

Why did she open his email? What was she expecting to find? Not this. Anything but this.

She wiped her tears on the sleeves of her blouse, took a loud, aching breath, and guzzled down the bottle of water she had brought with her. There must be something wrong with her, because any normal woman would have exited the email folder, powered down the laptop, and called it a night. But not Alicia. She wanted to learn more. Prove there was some mistake.

She clicked on the ‘sent’ folder and found only three emails. She opened the most recent one, and gasped, yet again. It was the itinerary for the trip to Paris, a week ago. Eliot’s administrative assistant, Erica, had emailed the itinerary to his personal email account. But then Eliot had forwarded it to this Faith woman. Alicia clicked the down arrow to see her email address: Empress Faith.

Was she serious? Empress?

Other pieces of the puzzle clicked into place: Nathan Hunt’s call in Paris. Eliot’s email telling Faith to stop calling his personal cell phone. Nathan Hunt must be Faith. That was why Eliot had panicked at the phone call during dinner, and that was why he’d said nothing when she’d complained to him in Paris about