My best friend of 37 years suddenly asked me to take one LAST photo together during our beach trip. When I asked why she said “last,” she gave me an unsettling smile and whispered, “Because tomorrow, you’re going to find out who I really am… and you may never want to see me again.”

Twenty-five minutes later, he was on the ground in the faculty parking lot.

I had spent eight months thinking those were the sweetest last words a man could leave his wife.

Now they sounded like a warning.

I put the phone face down on the bed. The room was spinning.

Secret meetings. A year of hiding. It will destroy her.

My husband and my best friend.

I didn’t remember getting up. I didn’t remember crossing the hall. The next thing I knew, I was standing in Paige’s doorway with the light on and Russell’s phone held up in my shaking hand.

She sat up in bed, blinking.

“Mer?”

“Were you sleeping with my husband?”

Her face went completely still. She looked at the phone. She looked at me.

“No,” she said. “God, no. Never. Not once.”

“Then what is this? A year of secret Thursdays? Did she ask where you were?”