It was Dolores, not me, who suggested the confrontation take place in front of the family. I want to be clear about that because I think it matters. I had been leaning toward something smaller, more contained. But Dolores, in her hurt and her fury, said something that stuck with me.
"Simone built her whole life on being the golden daughter, the successful one, the one everyone admired. If she's going to destroy this family with her lies, she should have to face every single person she lied to all at once, so there's no room left for her to spin a different story to each of them separately."
I understood in that moment that Dolores wasn't just angry on my behalf. She was angry as a mother who felt personally betrayed. And angrier still that her own private happiness with Harold had been dragged into her daughter's mess without her consent.
We spent the next two weeks planning quietly. Dolores reached out to Harold, and in one of the more remarkable turns of this entire story, Harold Ainslie, upon learning what his son had done, insisted on being present for the confrontation himself. "My son needs to look his father in the eye while this comes out," Harold told Dolores. "He's done this kind of thing before, and I let it slide before. I won't let it slide again."
Simone's sister, Paulette, who lived in Chattanooga and had always had a complicated competitive relationship with Simone, was brought in as well, though not told the full details until the morning itself. Dolores wanted witnesses, family who loved Simone and would still be devastated to learn what she'd done, rather than strangers who might simply gawk.
The plan itself was simple in structure, even if it was excruciating to actually execute. Simone had a standing Thursday night ritual by that point, one I now understood to be her time with Desmond, usually returning somewhere between midnight and dawn, always with some variation of the same excuse.
Wade's surveillance confirmed she'd been with Desmond that particular Thursday at a house he was renting in the Berry Hill neighborhood. And this time, rather than confronting her the moment she walked through our door reeking of someone else's cologne, I decided to let her have that final night of thinking she'd gotten away with it.
I remember lying in bed that night, wide awake, listening for the sound of the garage door. It was 4:07 in the morning when I heard her key in the lock. I heard her stumble slightly in the hallway, that particular unsteadiness of someone who's had more to drink than they should have. She came into the bedroom and I sat up, deliberately, letting her see that I was awake.
"Where were you?" I asked, keeping my voice level, the same voice I use with clients when I already know the answer to a question, but need to hear them say it out loud.
Simone leaned against the doorframe, this slow, satisfied smile spreading across her face, the kind of smile that only comes from someone who believes, completely and totally, that they've outsmarted everyone around them. "Don't ask, Roland," she said.
There was almost a taunt buried in those three words, like she wanted me to push, wanted the drama, wanted some confirmation that I still cared enough to fight for her attention. I didn't ask again. I just said, "Okay."
I watched something flicker across her face, confusion maybe, or disappointment that I hadn't given her the reaction she was fishing for. She went into the bathroom and I lay back down, staring at the ceiling, thinking about Harold and Dolores and Paulette, all of whom would be arriving at our house in less than six hours.
I barely slept. Around 6:30, I got up quietly, showered in the guest bathroom so as not to wake her, and started making coffee in the kitchen. Dolores arrived first at 7:45, letting herself in with the spare key she'd had for years, her face pale but composed.
Harold arrived 20 minutes later, a tall, soft-spoken man with kind eyes that carried an unmistakable weight of shame that morning. Shame not for anything he'd done, but for what his son had done. Paulette arrived last, confused, asking me three separate times what exactly was going on before I finally told her simply, "You need to see this for yourself."
I set two chairs in the living room, my armchair positioned so that anyone walking in from the hallway would see it immediately, and I asked Harold if he would be willing to sit there. He agreed without hesitation. Dolores stood beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder.
And I want you to understand what that image actually was, because it's the exact image Simone walked into. Not some stranger sitting in judgment. Her own mother's boyfriend, a man whose son had been secretly sleeping with her, sitting in her husband's chair, with her own mother standing beside him. Tears already sliding silently down her face before Simone had even entered the room.
Paulette sat on the couch, arms crossed, still not entirely understanding what she was about to witness. I stood near the entryway of the living room, close enough to the hallway that I would be the first thing Simone saw when she came downstairs, but positioned so that as she walked further in, the tableau in the living room would reveal itself piece by piece.
At 9:15, I heard the bedroom door open upstairs. I heard her footsteps on the stairs, unhurried, the footsteps of a woman who had absolutely no idea her entire world was about to come apart in the next 90 seconds.
"Roland," she called out, "is that coffee I smell? Did Mom come by?"
She walked into the kitchen first, saw the extra coffee cups, and I watched her expression shift from mild curiosity to something more alert. "What's going on? Why does it look like you're hosting a meeting in here?"
"Living room," I said. That was all I said. Two words.