“I know. And it still doesn’t make any sense. How could you do this to me?”
“I’m not doing this to you. I’m doing this for us. It will be good. I promise.”
“Explain to me one more time how me moving away from my friends is good for us.”
“It’s complicated. But you’ll see.”
She stomped her foot like a toddler. “I don’t want to see! I just want to stay!”
“I know. But you can’t. I’m sorry.”
Her face flushed red. “I should’ve chosen Grandpa and Grandma.”
Her words hit him like a slap across the face. During the custody battle, Piper had been given the opportunity to speak privately with the judge and say whom she wanted to live with. While legally she didn’t get to choose, her personal preference would carry tremendous weight with the court’s decision. Of course, the legal proceedings never got that far after Lars backed off in response to Jake’s threats.
Piper must’ve been able to tell how much her words stung Jake, because her eyes immediately filled with water. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.” She rushed over and hugged him, tears streaming. “I’m so sorry. I’m just . . . scared.”
“I know,” Jake said. Truthfully, he was scared, too. He had no idea where life was going to take them from here. He didn’t know if he was going to do even worse damage to Piper by forcing her to leave the only place she’d ever known. He just knew they had to leave.
“Everything is changing so much,” Piper said.
“Except us,” Jake replied. “You and me. Always. Right?”
She swallowed, nodded. “Right.”
Jake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Again, he reminded himself to keep moving forward, so he began searching for a couple of specific tubs. He’d kept everything from Sarah’s home office: books, notepads, journals, lamps, framed photos, and even office supplies. He’d kept all of it. But the most important items to him right now were her day planner and laptop. Jake began shifting boxes and tubs around, searching, building up a sweat while trying to make quick work of all this. It took him some time to pull everything out before he located the two tubs. He found the laptop and stepped back into the hallway to locate an electrical outlet just outside his unit. After plugging in the laptop, he set it on a stack of boxes and then powered it up. But he would need Sarah’s password to get inside.
Jake went back to hunting through the two plastic tubs until he found the black day planner his wife used. Sarah was super practical. She didn’t trust using only the online cloud to store her vital information. So he knew she had a page in the back of her day planner where she’d scribbled down all her important passwords and codes. Flipping through the contents of the day planner brought on a rush of emotion as he stared at his wife’s handwriting and her little notes here and there. There was a family photo of them stuck in the middle of the day planner. They were skiing in Vail. Piper was eight and bundled up in her cute pink-and-purple ski jumpsuit. Tears instantly hit his eyes. The thought of going one more day without her back with him safe was nearly paralyzing. He reached up, wiped his eyes dry with his left hand, and kept searching through the day planner. He finally found the page near the back, located the password, and returned to her laptop.
He paused before typing it in. Did he really want to go here? At the moment, the prospect of an affair was just a stupid thought. Did he really want to go the distance and confirm it actually happened? Reality could be crushing. But what choice did he have? If an affair was somehow the catalyst for all this and helped him find Piper, he had to go there. He typed in her password and gained access to the laptop. There was another family photo as her background. The three of them were celebrating at Chili’s—Piper’s choice—after he’d been hired as the head coach at Stephen F. Austin High School.
Jake connected to the storage facility’s public Wi-Fi account and then opened up a web browser. Then he went to Google Mail, knowing Sarah used it for her personal messages. Jake had done nothing in the past year to shut down any of her email, phone, or social media accounts. The thought of closing the book on Sarah’s life was just too painful. He hoped that decision would pay off for him now in finding some answers. He again searched the day-planner page for Sarah’s passwords and used them to log in to her Gmail account. He could feel his heart racing with anticipation—both dread and hope. It was strange logging back in to his wife’s life, as if she were still alive.