Now I was holding his jacket as though it might contain evidence that those promises had already been broken.
My name is Valerie.
I was twenty-seven years old.
And before Callum, I had become almost embarrassingly skilled at discovering things men believed they had hidden well.
Darren had kept a second phone in the glove compartment of his car.
Mitchell introduced me repeatedly to a woman he called his cousin.
She was actually his fiancée.
By twenty-three, I had developed what my best friend Felicia called:
“a graduate degree in suspicious behavior.”
Then Callum entered my life.
And refused to behave suspiciously.
On our third date, he put his unlocked phone on the restaurant table.
“I don’t do secrets.”
I laughed.
“Everybody has secrets.”
“Fine.
I don’t do the kind that requires remembering which lie I told on Tuesday.”
That was Callum.
For four years, there were no unexplained disappearances.
No mystery accounts.
No hidden phones.
