Second Wife

Chapter 12 — The Plan

Beth made pancakes.

It was such an ordinary thing — flour on the counter, butter melting in the pan, the hiss of batter hitting heat — that Anna almost laughed. She’d expected war rooms and pin boards. Instead she got maple syrup and a woman in sweatpants flipping pancakes like the world wasn’t on fire.

“Eat first,” Beth said, sliding a plate across the table. “Rule number one of ruining a man: do it on a full stomach.”

“I’m not sure I want to ruin him,” Anna said. “I’m not sure what I want.”

Beth sat down with her own plate. “Two years ago, I sat exactly where you’re sitting and said exactly that sentence. Here’s what I learned: you don’t have to decide today. You just have to decide not to warn him. That’s the whole plan at the start. We keep our mouths shut and we watch.”

Anna cut into her pancakes. “Watch what?”

“Everything.” Beth reached under the table and pulled out a manila folder, fat with paper. “For two years, I’ve been collecting. Bank statements I found in his gym bag. Receipts. Copies of business contracts he left on the kitchen table. I photographed everything before I put it back. Craig thinks I’m the kind of woman who doesn’t look at paperwork. He’s right about most wives he knows. He’s wrong about me.”

Anna set down her fork and opened the red notebook. Side by side on the table, the two women’s evidence stared up at them: two years of Beth’s patient photocopies, three weeks of Anna’s frantic notes. Different handwriting. The same man, lying in both.

“This is good,” Anna said, flipping through Beth’s folder. “This is— Beth, this is a lot.”

“I had a lot of time,” Beth said. “And a lot of anger. Anger is an excellent filing system.”

They spent two hours cross-referencing. Craig’s “business trips” matched Beth’s documented receipts almost to the hour. The hotel in Anna’s receipt from chapter one — Beth had a matching charge on a credit card Anna had never seen. Craig had told Anna he was in Cleveland. He’d told Beth he was in Cincinnati. He’d been in neither.

“He’s not even a good liar,” Anna said. “He’s just a confident one.”

“That’s how they all work,” Beth said. “Confidence is the con.”

By noon, the table was covered in paper, and Anna’s pancakes had gone cold. She didn’t care. For the first time in weeks, the fog in her head was lifting, replaced by something sharp and clear.

“So what’s the goal?” Anna asked. “Divorce? Expose him? What do we actually want?”

Beth was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, “I want my name off his lies.”

Anna waited.

“I’ve spent two years being an accomplice to something I didn’t agree to,” Beth said. “My mortgage, my car, my children’s college funds — everything in my life has his fingerprints on it. If I just divorce him and walk away, I’m still the woman who was married to a fraud. My kids still carry his name. I want to know exactly what he’s done, and I want to be able to look my children in the eye and say: I fixed it.”

“No catfight,” Anna said slowly, remembering the words from her own notebook. “We don’t fight each other. We go after the money.”

“Hit the money, not the mistress,” Beth agreed. “That’s the rule. We’re not the first wife and the second wife. We’re two women who got conned by the same man, and we’re getting even the smart way.”

“The smart way being?”

“We document. We follow the money. We find out where it all goes, and then — when we have everything — we decide what to do with it. No confrontations. No screaming. No giving him a chance to cover his tracks.” Beth’s eyes were steel. “He’s had twelve years of us not paying attention. That ends now.”

Anna thought about Jenna, about the daughter who’d seen her father with another woman in a mall and carried that alone. She thought about twelve years of trust, of believing she was the center of a good man’s life.

“There’s something else,” Anna said. She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “Jenna. My daughter. She saw him before I did. She’s sixteen, Beth. She’s been carrying this.”

Beth’s face softened. “Then we do this for her too. And for my kids. The four of them don’t deserve to inherit this mess.”

“My kids,” Anna corrected gently. “One. Jenna. She’s my only—”

“I know,” Beth said. “But Beth’s kids have been calling him Daddy for eight years. When this breaks, it breaks for all of them. The children are going to need each other. I think we should plan for that.”

It was such a strange, forward-looking thing to say. Plan for the children’s friendship. Plan for a future after the bomb went off.

“What if we can’t find anything?” Anna asked. “What if it’s just the affair?”

Beth looked at her for a long time. Then she opened the manila folder to the last page — a bank statement, photocopied, with a balance that made Anna’s stomach drop.

“Anna,” Beth said quietly. “A sales rep who ‘travels constantly’ doesn’t have this much money moving through his accounts. I’ve done the math. This isn’t just an affair. This is something bigger. And I’m scared of what it is.”

Anna stared at the numbers. She thought about the hotel receipt. The lies. The two families. The money that didn’t add up.

“Then we follow the money,” Anna said.

“Together,” Beth said.

They shook hands across the table, over the cold pancakes and the evidence and the wreckage of two marriages.

Outside, a car pulled into the driveway. Both women froze.

Craig’s car. Home early.

Anna’s heart hammered. Beth’s hand shot out and swept the papers off the table into her lap, smooth as a magician.

“Smile,” Beth whispered. “You’re just here for lunch.”

The front door opened.