Crista flinched. “Like I said, you don’t know everything.”
Maggie leaned forward to make the obvious point. “Crista, you’re pregnant and that can wreak havoc on a woman’s moods. Anthony adores you. That man looks at you like you hung the moon. There is no universe in which he?—”
“I thought so, too,” Crista sighed, sounding nothing like the drama queen she usually was, not emotional, just…certain. And scared to death.
“What are you basing this on?” Maggie asked.
Crista swallowed. “You know he was promoted. He’s running an entire engineering division now. He’s in meetings constantly. He’s…different.”
“He’s under pressure,” Maggie said quickly. “He wants to impress the higher-ups and earn that big pay raise. That doesn’t make him unfaithful.”
“He has a new administrative assistant,” Crista said. “She’s young. She’s pretty.”
Maggie scoffed. “Women have never been his weakness.”
“He takes calls outside now. He never did before. And he doesn’t want me to see his phone.”
“Work calls.”
“I picked his phone up once,” Crista said. “I saw texts with his admin. I was too scared of getting caught to read them. But the next time I looked, those texts were gone. The third time, there was a password.”
Maggie’s breath caught. “Honey, you shouldn’t?—”
“And the debit card,” Crista interjected, ready to pop now that she’d taken off her seal of silence. “I found a brand-new one in his wallet. A separate account. One I know nothing about.”
Oof. That one hit hard. Maggie’s mind flashed to another man, another marriage, another set of hidden finances that had nearly destroyed everything. The money was the first sign that Roger had been up to…something.
“Well,” she said slowly. “That is…odd. But it does not automatically mean?—”
“I feel it, Mama,” Crista said. “In my gut. Something is wrong. He’s not being honest with me.”
Maggie knew that intuition, too. “Have you asked him?”
Crista shook her head. “He’d say I’m hormonal. That I’m imagining things. And maybe I am. But what if I’m not?”
Maggie searched the face of her beautiful, fragile, complicated daughter.
“You do have a tendency to…overdramatize,” she said gently.
Crista’s eyes filled. “This isn’t drama. This is my marriage. What should I do?”
Maggie closed her eyes and considered every aspect of the question and how best to answer it.
“Stay here,” she said finally. “Stay for a few weeks and be with your family. Let him miss you. Let him remember what life feels like without you and Nolie in it.”
Crista stared at her. “You want me to leave him?”
“I want you to breathe,” Maggie said. “And I want him to remember what he stands to lose.”
Crista fell back against the sofa.
Before she could respond, footsteps sounded behind them. They both turned to see Vivien in the doorway, already dressed, her purse on her shoulder, her face drawn as she nodded to them.
“Is everything okay?” Crista asked, searching her sister’s expression.
“Peter’s son, Connor, was in a car accident last night,” she announced quietly. “He’s okay. Concussion. Broken bones. They kept him overnight. I’m going to the hospital.”
Maggie rose instantly. “Oh, I liked that young man. How awful.”
