“What?”
She looked pale.
“He said the pregnancy with the twins was too traumatic. We broke up for good afterward. Then a few years later we briefly got back together.”
“Elliot is not the baby in that hospital photograph?”
“No.”
Mason stopped eating.
“So who is?”
Neither of us answered.
Vanessa grabbed the old photograph from her purse again.
She placed it between us.
Two newborn boys.
ELLIOT.
MASON.
She stared at the handwritten labels.
“My sister sent this to me three months ago.”
“Three months?”
“Yes.”
“That photograph is why you started seeing Tyler again?”
Her silence answered me.
I felt the pieces rearranging.
“You weren’t having an affair for years.”
“No.”
“How long?”
“Four months.”
I closed my eyes.
That did not excuse Tyler.
But it changed the shape of the deception.
“He told me you were already separated,” Vanessa said.
I nodded slowly.
“Of course he did.”
