Chapter 5 - The Name is Evelyn
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The following morning, I sat at the kitchen island, sipping coffee while Richard read the financial times. He looked up, offering a tired but handsome smile over the rim of his mug.
“I have to fly to Chicago tomorrow, Victoria,” Richard announced casually, turning a page of the newspaper. “The zoning board is pushing back on the new high-rise project. I’ll probably be gone until Thursday.”
“Of course, darling,” I replied, keeping my voice light and supportive. “I’ll pack your garment bag.”
Chicago. The lie tasted like ash in my mouth, but I swallowed it down with my coffee.
Once Richard left for the office and Stella was safely dropped off at her elementary school, I returned to the empty brownstone and opened my laptop. I created a secure, encrypted folder on an external hard drive and uploaded the photographs I had taken during the night.
I typed the name into the search engine: Evelyn Hayes, Greenwich, Connecticut.
The internet is a terrifyingly efficient tool when you know exactly what you are looking for. Within twenty minutes, I had pieced together the architecture of Richard’s deception.
Evelyn Hayes was a thirty-two-year-old art curator who managed an exclusive boutique gallery in Manhattan. Her social media profiles were private, but the charity gala pages were not. There were dozens of high-society photographs of her attending events over the past four years.
In several of them, a man’s arm was visible around her waist. A man wearing a very familiar vintage Patek Philippe watch.
But the most devastating discovery came from a local Greenwich country club newsletter. It featured a profile on new members. There was a bright, smiling picture of Evelyn sitting on a manicured lawn with a young boy.
Evelyn Hayes and her son, Leo (8), enjoying the summer festivities.
I stared at the photograph of the boy. Leo. He had Richard’s jawline, Richard’s dark hair, and the exact same asymmetrical smile that Stella possessed.
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Leo was eight years old. Stella was six.
The timeline crashed over me like a tidal wave of ice. Richard hadn't met Evelyn after our marriage. He had known her before. He had fathered a child with her two years before I even walked down the aisle. I wasn't just the betrayed wife. I was the convenient, public-facing cover story for a man who had built a dynasty of lies.
