Briana was part of those evenings. She and Celeste had been best friends since their first office jobs, long before I entered the picture. Briana was loud, affectionate, and quick to say what other people were thinking, although she wasn't always careful about whether it was hers to say. She came to our apartment often enough to know which cupboard held the coffee mugs. Over the years, I learned that disagreements between Celeste and me had a way of reaching Briana in simplified form before I knew there had been a story to tell.
I didn't dislike Briana. She'd helped us move furniture, brought dinner over when my father was in the hospital, and once drove across town to help find Biscuit after he escaped through an open gate. What bothered me was the way Celeste sometimes used her presence as a second vote in a marriage that had only two people in it. If Briana approved of a plan, Celeste treated my objections as a technicality. I never explained that clearly enough, and by the time I did, it was already too late.
Grant Whitaker entered the picture more gradually. He was Celeste's direct manager at Westbridge, a few years older than us, the kind of man who wore expensive watches with rolled-up sleeves so the whole room could admire them. I met him at a company barbecue the previous summer. He shook my hand, asked what I did, and nodded without interest when I said refrigeration. Then he turned to Celeste and began talking about a sales presentation they'd given together, as though I had been invited to hear an old joke rather than join a conversation.
I remember the watch because Celeste mentioned it in the car afterward. Heavy silver bracelet, dark face, and a price that sounded absurd for something that told the same time as my phone. She said Grant had excellent taste, and I told her I'd stick with the battered watch my father had given me. She laughed and said there was nothing wrong with wanting nicer things. I said there wasn't, and I meant it.
Soon Grant's name became part of ordinary conversations. Grant liked her ideas, Grant wanted her to lead a client account, Grant thought she deserved more recognition, Grant believed Westbridge might create a new position for her. I was glad her work seemed to be going well. I also noticed that late meetings had become more frequent and that she increasingly arrived home carrying a kind of bright, distracted energy she didn't share with me. When I asked about her day, I got the summary; when her phone lit up, she gave someone else the details.
It would be convenient to say I knew then. I didn't. People work late, colleagues become friends, and marriages are damaged every day by suspicion dressed up as certainty. I had promised myself I wouldn't become the husband who inspected a wife's phone simply because she was making a life outside the house. So I trusted the explanations she gave me, even after I stopped believing they described everything that mattered.