How much had she even told me about her job? She was vague about names of the people she worked with, vague about what she did all those hours.
A thought crept in—the kind you can’t send packing. Was it another guy?
Hell.
Couldn’t be. She wouldn’t.
And her note said she’d be coming back. A woman wouldn’t run away and have an affair for a week and then return to her husband. Would she?
Willow loudly complained from the other room. Lilly was being annoying. Lilly jumped in to put in her counter-complaint: Willow wouldn’t play with her.
“Be nice to each other, will you?” I hollered.
That only unleashed a torrent of grievances on both sides, Lilly barely able to explain her issues with her sister before dissolving into shrieking sobs.
I stepped into the living room. “Play quietly and we’ll get some ice cream later.” Evie wouldn’t be impressed. She kept telling me not to bribe the kids. But right now, I didn’t have time for that delicate balance of patience and compromise that Evie used.
Lilly turned off her cascade of tears. “Promise?”
“Double promise.” I gave her my serious-Daddy nod and then turned and headed for the stairs.
First things first. I was going to call the restaurant and see if anyone there knew where Evie might have gone. I didn’t like calling her place of work, and there was no way of doing it without sounding a little bit suspect. Looking up the name of the restaurant that Evie had given me, I tapped the number onto my phone.
They sounded busy as soon as they answered. Lots of background noise. Music.
“Would I be able to speak with Evie?” I asked.
“Who?” The woman’s voice was pleasant but hurried.
“Evie Harlow. She works a few nights there each week.”
“I’m the manager. There’s no Evie Harlow who works here.”
Was she using a different name? “She’s been there for a couple of months,” I insisted. “Twenty-six years old. Brown hair. Brown eyes.”
“I’m sorry. No one by that description works here. Most of our staff are guys. And there are two older ladies. Sorry, you’ve got the wrong restaurant.” She didn’t wait for my reply before she hung up. She’d been polite but firm in what she’d said.
I sat on my bed, stunned. I had the right restaurant. I thought back to the handful of times I’d called her while she was working. She’d always returned my call, never answering straight away. There’d been the sound of people talking in the background, sometimes music. I’d thought that was the sound of a busy restaurant. Obviously, it wasn’t.
I was going to do the thing that I’d always sworn couples should never do to each other—check up on their internet browsing history. Evie and I had an unspoken understanding that we would never do that. I was sure it was more for my benefit than hers. She spent most of her online time on Facebook, sharing recipes and photos of the kids. Or chatting on parenting forums. Evie didn’t need to know which porn sites I visited occasionally. She didn’t need to know that I had a fixation with a certain actress.
But I was going to look at her online history. She had already broken the rules by running off and leaving our kids with Marla.
Like a thief in the night, I picked up my wife’s laptop computer from her bedside table and sat back on the bed with it. The laptop was usually there. At night, when we were in bed together, we often spent an hour or two on our laptops, more often than not chatting about what we were looking at.
Had I been an idiot to think she was happy doing that kind of stuff with me? Did she want more than I could give her? Something—or someone—different? Was I going to find a heap of dating site links on here?
I started with her browsing history.
It was wiped clean.
Okay, I had more tricks in my toolbox. I tried typing in each letter of the alphabet—separately, to see which searches she’d made before. Lots of recipe stuff. That was typical Evie. She loved cooking.
A search came up for browsers other than google.
I hit enter and looked through the results.
She’d clicked on a result for a browser I’d never heard of.
So, my wife had a secret browser.
I opened up the new browser. She hadn’t deleted her history here. I guessed she hadn’t thought she’d need to, because I’d never find it.
Hell. Hell. Hell.
A ton of gambling sites.
Online poker. American slot machines. Other kinds of gambling sites.
Evie had been gambling? The links ran back for months and months.