“Another man?” Hannah echoed. “Who?”

Dunstan sighed. “Eli Robertson. We were best friends for practically forever, and we’d gone through a few rough patches, like when I thought he took the woman I was really in love with. Turns out she was really with this hotshot musician who ended up making it big, but that’s a whole other story. He moved out of state around when Angela and I got married, and he made a good living as an accountant. He moved back down here about a year ago, and that’s when things really got bad.”

“How bad?”

Dunstan shook his head. “The jerk took my family from me, that’s what happened.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating.”


“Nope. He charmed Angela almost immediately, and being the gold digger she was, she fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things, that my overactive imagination was making me see things that weren’t really happening, but… well, I wasn’t. Those two became pretty much inseparable. It was painful, believe me. And… and, my daughter…”


“What about her?”

Dunstan scowled, looking disgusted. “Mona pretty much acted like he was a gift from God. This is the same girl who pretty much walked on eggshells around me, like she expected me to start screaming at her at any second,” he said. “She even left school early a couple of times and went to get ice cream with Angela and Eli. I was being kicked out of my own family, can you believe it? Discarded, like yesterday’s newspaper.”

“So, what happened then?”


Dunstan shrugged and replied, “Well, one day, Angela came up to me and pretty much told me that we were through, that she was leaving me for Eli. And she packed up her things and Mona’s stuff, and they left. And that was the last time I saw them.”

Hannah sat back, silent for several seconds. Then, she finally spoke. “A very touching story,” she remarked. “But you’re lying. That wasn’t the last time you saw them, and you know it.”

“It was,” Dunstan protested, almost whining. “Why would I lie?”

“Because of what happened,” Hannah spat out. “I know the truth.”

“What truth?”

“What you’ve been lying to yourself about.”