Neither of us spoke until she pulled away from the curb.
Then she said, “Briar Lake.”
I closed my eyes.
“I heard her.”
“Do you know what it means?”
“No.”
But that wasn’t entirely true.
The name stirred something faint and uncomfortable in my memory.
Briar Lake.
Not a town. Not exactly. A place on the edge of the county where wealthy families owned summer cabins behind private gates. Claudia had mentioned it once, early in my marriage, when she was still pretending to like me.
The Reeds used to spend August there, she had said while pouring tea into porcelain cups. Before things became complicated.
When I asked what became complicated, she changed the subject.
My phone buzzed in the diaper bag.
Nora glanced over. “Don’t answer if it’s him.”
“It can’t be. The court app isn’t set up yet.”
I pulled out the phone.
Unknown number.
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then a message appeared.
Do not trust Vanessa. She helped him plan this.
My mouth went dry.
Another message followed.
And do not go to Briar Lake alone.
Nora pulled into a grocery store parking lot and put the car in park.
“Who is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
The phone buzzed again.
This time, it was a photo.
Not recent. The colors were slightly faded, the edges showing that it had been taken of an older printed picture.
A younger Evan stood on a dock beside a lake, smiling with one arm around a teenage girl with dark hair and wary eyes.
Beside them stood Claudia, elegant and unsmiling.
On the back of the photo, someone had written three words in blue ink.
Before Lily, remember Anna.
I stared at the name until the letters seemed to shift.
Anna.
I had never heard Evan mention an Anna.
Not once.
Nora leaned closer, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Lily… who is she?”
I looked down at Noah, sleeping peacefully beneath his blanket, then back at the photograph of the girl by the lake.
“I don’t know,” I said.
But somewhere deep inside me, a quiet and terrible certainty began to form.
Evan had not started practicing his lies with me.
