But he was already gone, pulling the front door closed behind him. I heard his footsteps thumping down the stairs of my apartment building.
I texted. I called. I even went by the insurance company, but the receptionist said he wasn’t in. For days, I sought him out. It was our baby, his and mine—we should be mourning together. Eventually I got one single text back:I’m sorry. I need time.
Apparently, though, it was only me that he needed time away from. I spotted him leaving his office a couple of weeks later. I had taken to staking the area out, waiting at a coffee shop across the street, three doors down, where I could see his building’s entrance if I sat at one of the window tables. That day, I followed him to a bar. I saw him buy a drink for a woman wearing a pink tank top and a black skirt barely bigger than a belt. I watched them as they left the bar a couple of hours later, weaving, tipsy. They disappeared into an old Victorian a few blocks away. They didn’t come back out.
After that, following Max became somewhat of a full-time job. In many ways, now I can see that it was a welcome distraction from the pain of my two immense losses, not to mention the physical pain that lingered. It took a while for my body to completely expel my child; the cramps lasted weeks, the spotting returning several times.
Max saw Pink Tank Top Girl at least two more times. Each time, he followed her back to her place and didn’t emerge again until the next morning.
After Pink Tank Top Girl, there was Anklet Girl. I called her that in my mind because she always wore these impossibly high stiletto heels with a gold anklet on her left foot. She liked to wear her long brown hair high in a ponytail on top of her head, and somehow her outfits looked both expensive and cheap at the same time. Max found her at a swanky hotel bar in Mission Bay. The first time he spent the night with her, they just went right upstairs to a room in the hotel. The next couple of times he saw her, he followed her back to a high-rise apartment building.
Sometimes his trysts overlapped. For example, his first night with Anklet Girl was in between his second and third nights with Pink Tank Top Girl.
But what threw me the most was the next girl I saw him with. The girl with the perfect smile and shiny brown hair, and the diamond on her left ring finger.
PART TWOJenna
CHAPTER25
IWAS SITTINGNEARthe coffee shop window late one Friday afternoon when I saw Max leave his office. He checked his phone, looked up and down the street, and then reached into his pants pocket. He pulled something out and worked it onto his finger. Even though it was hard to make out the details from where I sat, I knew right away what it was.
A wedding band.
A moment later, an Uber Black pulled up to the curb and a woman got out. Swaying her hips and dangling her Marc Jacobs purse from her forearm, she walked up to Max, put her arms around his neck, and gave him a long, passionate kiss. I followed them as they walked to a restaurant a few blocks away.
I lingered across the street. When they came out about an hour and a half later, I followed them back to Max’s apartment. I knew it was his apartment because I had followed him there many times.
Of all the girls I’d seen Max with, including me, he had never taken any of us to his apartment. If he’d slipped on a wedding band, did that mean he was married to this girl?
I started following Miss Perfect, trying to learn her name. I discovered she worked part-time at a doctor’s office downtown,but there was no way they would give me any info on her. One day, I saw her get out of an Uber and walk into the doctor’s office. I ran over to the Uber, knocked on the driver’s window, and offered him fifty bucks if he would pull up his passenger’s profile and tell me her name.
Madison Hunter.
I was right. Max had a wife.
A thousand questions filled my brain. Was Max a serial cheater? Was I just one girl in his endless line of side pieces? Did Madison know about all the other women—and our baby?
I had to keep following the both of them. I needed answers.
The thing that got me out of bed each day? Following Max and Madison. I had to track down more information about her—about them. If I could just find out what the story was—the explanation for what had happened to me—maybe I would feel normal again. Maybe I could move on.
It was surprisingly easy to find a digital copy of Madison’s high school yearbook online. I scrolled through page after page of rich, picture-perfect classmates until I found her—Madison Clark. At first glance, she looked like the quintessential, beautiful, All-American teenage girl, but I could sense a darkness behind her eyes, emanating off the page—maybe because it was speaking to the hidden darkness that was growing inside of me.
On a page of candid shots from around campus, I came across a photo of Madison with her arms around another girl. The caption read:“Two peas in a pod! Best friends, Madison Clark and Leslie Prescott.”
A quick Google search found Leslie Prescott on LinkedIn, where she listed herself as the Director of Memberships at Marin County Country Club—where, apparently, I needed to apply for membership as soon as possible.
Leslie Prescott greeted me in the lobby. She wore a tight, navy-blue dress with a fitted black blazer and heels. Her black hair was in a flawless French twist and diamonds twinkled in her ears. She smiled and reached out to shake my hand.
“Hello! You must be Samantha Henry,” she said, reading my alias from the clipboard she was holding. I had chosen a girl from Madison and Leslie’s graduating class who had light blonde hair like my own, figuring I could pass for her closely enough, if they should try looking me up.
“Yes! Thanks so much for seeing me.”
She led me to her spotless office overlooking the emerald green golf course, with the sparkling San Francisco Bay in the distance. The green was dotted with wealthy white men and their golf carts, enjoying an afternoon of leisure in the midday sun.
“So! Tell me what brings you to the Marin County Country Club,” she said.
“Well, I just moved back to town. I grew up here, but I moved away for many years.” It was so easy to make it up as I went. “I went to Woodgrove High. Class of 2015.”
