“Revenge that feels good immediately is usually expensive later.” I laughed despite myself.
“You’ve been waiting your whole life to say something like that.” “Absolutely.”
Natalie replied twenty-three minutes later. Call me now.
Her number followed. I hesitated before dialing because part of me still hoped I had misunderstood what I had seen. Natalie answered on the first ring.
She sounded awake, alert, and strangely unsurprised. “How long has Lauren been talking to Mason?” she asked without introduction.
“About six months.” Natalie breathed out once.
“Of course.”
That phrase frightened me more than shock would have. I asked whether she and Mason were still together. “We’re engaged.”
“When are you getting married?” “Seven weeks.”
I looked toward Derek. “Does Mason know Lauren is getting married tomorrow?”
“He told me she was an old girlfriend getting sentimental before her wedding.” Natalie’s voice became harder. “He said they were catching up occasionally because she was nervous about marriage.”
I closed my eyes. “Lauren thinks you two broke up.”
“He told her that?” “Apparently.”
Natalie gave a humorless laugh. “That explains several things.”
She told me Mason had become protective of his phone around the time he reconnected with Lauren. He made unnecessary weekend trips, stayed late at the office, and began talking about “unfinished chapters” in ways Natalie had dismissed as pre-wedding anxiety of his own. She knew about the Nashville trip.
Mason told her he attended an alumni dinner while there for a client meeting. Natalie later discovered he had not met any clients that weekend. She had confronted him, and he convinced her she was becoming paranoid.
“I almost apologized,” she said. “That’s the part I hate.”
I asked if she had proof of what he was doing. Natalie became quiet. “I have something worse.”
A minute later, screenshots began arriving. They came from a messaging app Mason had left logged into on a shared tablet in their apartment. Natalie had noticed the conversations several weeks earlier but had copied only a few because she was not yet ready to believe what they meant.
The messages were between Mason and a college friend named Lucas Avery. The first screenshot was almost five months old.
Mason wrote, Guess who’s marrying Mr. Safe. Lucas answered, Lauren? Leave that alone. Mason replied, I just want to know if she’d still pick me if I pushed.
I stared at the words. Natalie remained silent on the phone.
A later exchange was worse. Lucas asked why Mason cared when he was engaged himself. Mason answered, It’s not about getting back together. I just hate that she gets to rewrite our history like I was some mistake and this accountant is the real thing.
I am not an accountant. I work in commercial insurance. The insult almost made me laugh because it was such a small, stupid detail inside something far uglier.
Lucas replied, You’re thirty-five years old. Stop competing with a guy who doesn’t know he’s competing. Mason answered, Exactly. He doesn’t know.
The final screenshot had been sent four days earlier. Mason wrote, She says she needs closure before the wedding. I told her one night would answer everything. Lucas answered, Mason, seriously, stop.
Then came the sentence that ended every remaining mystery. If she comes, I know I could have had her anytime.
I read it twice. Then a third time.
Natalie said softly, “He was never planning to leave me.” I believed her.