Yoga classes. Sunset dinners. Couples drinking from coconuts. People posing beside a seashell-covered sign.
After nearly two hours, I found Grant.
He stood beside a woman with auburn hair wearing a yellow sundress. His arm was wrapped around her waist.
The caption read, “Best surprise vacation ever. Five days with my favorite person.”
The account belonged to Tessa.
The photograph had been posted on the first day of the trip.
That meant she had not met him at the resort.
Grant had planned the vacation with her beforehand.
I searched through her public profile.
She looked about thirty-five, a few years younger than me.
She worked at a bookstore, volunteered at an animal shelter, and had a teenage son.
There were no earlier photos of Grant, but one post from six weeks before caught my attention.
Some people enter your life when you least expect it.
Grant had responded with a heart.
I took screenshots of everything.
Then I messaged her from my real account.
“My name is Rachel. I believe you recently traveled with my husband, Grant. I found your note in his suitcase. I am not angry with you, but I need to understand what happened.”
She read it twenty minutes later.
No response came.
By lunchtime, I assumed she would block me.
Then an unknown number called.
“Hello?”
“Is this Rachel?” the woman on the other end asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“This is Tessa.”
I stepped into the backyard and closed the door behind me.
“Thank you for calling.”
“I almost didn’t.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” She inhaled sharply. “He told me you were his sister.”
For a moment, I thought I had heard her wrong.
“His sister?”
“He showed me photographs of your house. There was one of you standing beside him at a barbecue. He said you were his older sister and that he’d been staying with you after his divorce.”
Grant and I had never been divorced.
We had been married for eleven years.
“What else did he tell you?”
“That his ex-wife left him for another man. That she emptied their savings. That he hadn’t dated seriously since.”
I closed my eyes.
“I am his only wife.”
“I know that now.”
“How did you find out?”
Tessa went quiet.
“On the third day, he was in the shower. His phone kept ringing. I thought it might be an emergency, so I looked at the screen.”
“What did you see?”
“Your name kept popping up. I tapped the contact, hoping to find another way to reach you if something had happened to him.”
She swallowed.
“The profile photo was the two of you together.”
My stomach sank.
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