Chapter 3: The Name Saved Under a Warning
Thomas followed Evelyn away from the entrance and toward a quieter section of the hotel courtyard.
He looked exhausted.
“That’s not what you think.”
Evelyn stared at him.
“You don’t know what I think.”
“I know exactly what you think.”
“Then tell me.”
Thomas couldn’t.
Evelyn watched his silence become an answer of its own.
“Who sent that message?”
“My colleague.”
“Marissa?”
“No.”
“Who?”
Thomas looked toward the hotel.
“It concerns my department.”
Evelyn laughed once.
“You’ve been married to me for thirty-four years, and somehow your department gets more information than your wife.”
He closed his eyes.
Then he finally pulled out his phone.
“I’ll show you.”
Evelyn didn’t move.
Thomas opened the message thread.
The sender wasn’t Marissa.
It was Thomas’s supervisor, Daniel Reeves.
The message above the one Evelyn had seen explained the situation.
If the board approves the restructuring tonight, you need to be ready. Don’t tell the staff until the announcement.
Evelyn’s anger faltered.
“What restructuring?”
Thomas sat on a low stone wall.
“My division is being eliminated.”
She stared at him.
“What?”
“I found out three days ago.”
The words changed everything.
Suddenly the secrecy had a different shape.
Thomas wasn’t protecting an affair.
He was protecting his pride.
He had spent twenty-seven years with the company. He had planned to work another two years, retire comfortably, and finally take the road trip they had postponed again and again.
Now he wasn’t sure whether his job would exist by the end of the evening.
Evelyn sat beside him.
“You should have told me.”
“I was going to.”
“When?”
“After I knew for certain.”
“You already knew enough to be afraid.”
Thomas looked down.
“Yes.”
For several seconds, neither spoke.
Then Evelyn remembered the other question.
She pointed toward the phone.
“That’s not the only thing.”
Thomas stiffened.
“The number.”
“What number?”
“The one you deleted.”
His eyes lifted.
Evelyn had not forgotten.
Thomas’s face changed.
“You went through my phone?”
“No. I saw it when you were checking your messages last week.”
“What number?”
“The woman you’re with today.”
Thomas shook his head.
“Marissa’s number wasn’t deleted.”
Evelyn frowned.
“Then whose was it?”
Thomas didn’t answer.
Instead, he opened his contacts.
There it was.
A number saved under an unusual label.
DON’T ANSWER.
Evelyn looked at him.
Thomas swallowed.
“That isn’t Marissa.”
“Then who is it?”
He turned the screen toward her.
The name underneath the warning wasn’t a woman’s name.
It was his older brother’s.
Evelyn’s suspicion collapsed into something much more complicated.
Thomas’s brother had died eight months earlier.
And nobody had called from that number since.
