Chapter 6 - The Message from the Other Woman
Alyssa contacted Naomi on a rainy Tuesday.
This time there was no photograph.
Only a short email.
You need to ask about Harbor Ledger. I have records. I know you have no reason to believe me.
Naomi stared at the screen.
Then she forwarded it to Evelyn.
By afternoon, Alyssa had agreed to speak with Naomi’s attorneys and provide the documents she claimed to possess.
Naomi refused a private meeting.
She had already given that woman enough space in her life.
What emerged over the following weeks was less glamorous than a hidden fortune and more frightening than a single lie.
Caleb’s company had been struggling.
Projects had run over budget. Financing had tightened. He had moved money between affiliated businesses, describing payments in ways that did not match the work performed.
Some of those transactions involved Miller Studio.
Alyssa had worked in administration for a consulting company connected to Caleb’s projects. Their affair had begun after months of professional contact.
She had known he was married.
She had known Naomi was pregnant.
But she claimed she had not understood the full financial picture until Caleb asked her to help locate old records and replace missing approvals.
Among the documents she provided were emails showing Caleb discussing Naomi’s business account with an outside administrator.
One message made Naomi’s stomach turn.
She doesn’t deal with this side. Send anything requiring approval directly to me.
Naomi read it in Evelyn’s office.
“How long has this been happening?”
“We’re still tracing the records,” Marisol said.
“Did he sign my name?”
“There are approvals attributed to you that we need to compare with the originals.”
Naomi pressed both feet against the floor.
She wanted certainty.
She wanted someone to tell her exactly how angry to be.
Instead, there were documents to verify, specialists to consult, and questions whose answers arrived slowly.
That night, she dreamed she was back in the penthouse, opening drawers that had no bottoms.
She woke before dawn with her heart racing.
Ruth found her making toast.
“I thought I knew everything about him,” Naomi said.
“You knew what he let you see.”
“I lived beside him.”
“That doesn’t make you responsible for what he hid.”
Naomi broke the toast in half.
The baby shifted beneath her ribs.
She was thirty-five weeks pregnant now. Her ankles swelled by evening. Small tasks required planning.
She did not have the energy to be both devastated and productive every day.
Some days, she answered emails.
Some days, she folded tiny clothes and watched old cooking shows with Ruth.
She began to understand that recovering was going to include afternoons that looked remarkably like accomplishing nothing.
At Denise’s office, the new reception area brought Naomi two referrals.
One was a couple renovating a small rental cabin.
The other was the town library, which needed a proposal for turning an unused room into a family reading space.
Naomi took the library meeting with swollen feet and a notebook full of ideas.
Owen was there as a local contractor.
When the committee asked whether she could complete drawings before the baby arrived, Naomi hesitated.
Owen spoke before she could promise too much.
“We can phase the work. There’s no reason the design schedule has to depend on Naomi working through delivery.”
She looked at him.
He looked back without making the moment larger than it was.
Afterward, she thanked him in the parking lot.
“You looked like you were about to agree to six impossible things,” he said.
“Only four.”
“I stand corrected.”
She laughed.
Then her expression faltered.
“I used to be better at knowing what I could handle.”
“Maybe you had fewer things to handle.”
It was such a reasonable answer that she carried it home.
Late that evening, another email arrived from Alyssa.
I’m sorry for the picture. There wasn’t any excuse for it. I wanted to feel chosen, and I made you suffer to prove I was.
Naomi sat with the message for a long time.
Then she wrote one reply.
Please continue providing any relevant records to the attorneys.
She did not offer forgiveness.
May you like
She did not send cruelty back.
For now, that was all she had.
