Garrett looked sick. “Nothing.”
“What does that mean?”
“Claire, please.”
I snatched the phone from his hand.
He lunged for it, but my father caught his wrist.
“Careful,” my father said.
Garrett froze.
I opened the thread.
There were dozens of messages.
Some flirtatious.
Some disgusting.
Some ordinary in the cruel way betrayal often is.
Dinner plans.
Hotel room numbers.
Complaints about my schedule.
Jokes about Garrett being “trapped in family life.”
And then I saw a message from Garrett sent two days earlier.
Ethan’s asthma is getting worse again. Claire’s hovering like always. I’ll tell her I have investor drinks Friday so we can actually breathe.
My vision blurred.
Below it, Melissa had replied:
Poor baby. You deserve a night without hospitals and inhalers.
And Garrett had written:
Exactly. She can handle it. She’s a nurse.
She can handle it.
I read that sentence until the letters stopped making sense.
