Eliza Starts a Rumor(23)

“How awful,” she said, hugging her. Olivia melted into her arms sobbing, the two strangers now intimate friends.

As Olivia wept, Alison regained her composure. This situation called for the Iron Lady, not the wussy confection of hormones and baby love that she’d become. Toeing the line between lawyering and mothering, Alison began her line of questioning while brewing a pot of chamomile tea.

“How are you certain it’s your husband? Did he admit it?”

“No, he denied it. But I’m sure.” Olivia pulled up the first post on her phone and showed it to Alison. She now knew it by heart and read along in her head.


Anonymous: I just moved here from the city with hopes of starting over after an affair that my husband knows nothing about. The man I was having the affair with followed me here and keeps showing up at my door . . .



“OK, is this all you’ve got? Because there is some major circumstantial stuff going on here. I understand that you moved here recently, but so have many other people. I bet there are other couples having the same fight right now!”

Olivia wasn’t buying it. She scrolled forward to the next post while explaining Spencer’s crazy reactions to reading them, and how he was gone in the morning at the same time the cheating woman claimed to be running with her boyfriend. Olivia read the next post. Alison was skeptical.

“Everyone runs in the morning. Did you confront him?”

“Yes.” She began crying again. “He turned it all around, accused me of cheating. It was so frustrating, and . . .” She took a deep breath to try and calm herself. “And so embarrassing. I mean, look at me. To accuse me of cheating . . .” Olivia’s milk had come in right on schedule, leaving her with circular stains on her gray T-shirt over each nipple and a good amount of guilt for having left a now-sure-to-be-hungry Lily at home. She buried her face in her hands. The teapot whistled. Alison fixed Olivia a cup of tea and placed it and the muffin in front of her.

“Here, eat something. I’ll go up and get you a sports bra and a clean T-shirt. I’ll be right back.”

Once upstairs, Alison called her best friend from college, a detective named Andie Rand, who specialized in domestic disputes after suffering a particularly horrendous one of her own. Recently engaged, she was finally not rendering anyone with a penis automatically guilty. Alison came back down, armed with a change of clothes and some very logical advice. Olivia went to the bathroom to wash her face and change. She took her time and came out somewhat renewed.

“I hope it’s OK, but I called my friend who owns a detective agency in the city. I didn’t give her your name.”

Olivia didn’t mind. She was desperate for direction. “I’m so thankful I bumped into you,” she said.

“Me too. So first off, she understands that you want to hear the truth from your husband, but if he is a cheater, then he’s also a liar. She says he will feed you lies, and you’ll want to believe them.”

So far she was right. Olivia only wanted to hear his explanation, to hear the words “I would never cheat on you” and to believe them and turn the page on this whole episode.

“It’s pointless to confront him until we gather as much evidence as possible.”

Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. Alison assumed it was because she was probably being cheated on, and as the timeline suggested, it was likely going on during her pregnancy. Alison reflected on her own experience of childbirth and shuddered at the thought of it being laced with duplicity. Poor Olivia. How soon before she started questioning months of interactions in her mind? Olivia’s awful situation affirmed Alison’s decision to go it alone, not that she’d really had much choice.

As it turned out, this trickling of tears was out of gratitude, because Alison had used the word “we.”

“Thank you so much for helping me like this. You don’t even know me.”

That was the best part of it for Olivia. While she was in the bathroom, she had resisted the urge to call her parents, her sister, or her best friend. She knew once she did, she could never take the words back. True or not, the damage would be done, especially if she told her father. She vowed only to confide in this stranger until the whole ordeal was resolved, regardless of the resolution.

“I don’t mind at all. I’m happy to be here for you, really.”

Olivia shook her head with a mixture of relief and appreciation.

“Did you tell your friend that he accused me back?” she asked hopefully. The more Olivia thought about it, the more she realized that Spencer could have come up with the same conclusions about a cheating spouse from the post that she had. The story did work both ways, and he had made little effort to conceal his behavior.

“I did tell her.” Alison paused, as the answer would not be fun to hear. “She said it may be true, but more often than not the guilty party hopes to defuse anger with confusion.”

Olivia’s face sank.

Alison knew one was innocent until proven guilty, but her career had swayed her to often believe the opposite. She was very familiar with the emotions involved when someone wanted so badly to believe that the person they know is blameless. She felt terrible for this woman.

“She said we can come see her at her office on Monday, if you want.”

Again, we. Olivia jumped at the chance. “The sooner the better. I have my sitter on Mondays. She can watch the kids if you want.”