Then I followed him.
He didn’t go to an office. Instead, he parked at a café on the edge of town. I watched through the window as he sat across from a woman.
I leaned forward, trying to see her face.
Then she leaned in.
“Oh, my God!” I whispered.
I recognized her. I had seen her once in old photos on his phone.
Laura. His ex-wife.
“It ended badly,” he had told me back then, his face tight with emotion.
And I had accepted that, assuming the pain was still fresh.
Now, watching them meet in secret, I felt foolish. At first, it seemed obvious—he was cheating.
But the longer I watched, the less that explanation made sense.
They weren’t smiling. They weren’t touching.
They were arguing.
After thirty minutes, Laura stood up abruptly, said something that made his jaw tighten, and walked away.
Without thinking, I followed her. If she was arguing with him, maybe she would tell me the truth about his “plan.”
She drove to a modest apartment complex across town.
Before I could change my mind, I knocked on her door.
She opened it halfway and froze. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She tried to close it.
I pressed my hand against the door. “I saw you with Jack. I know he’s planning something, and you’re involved.”
Laura grimaced. “I am not! I told him his plan is stupid, that he—” She stopped, then let out a sharp sigh. “Fine. Come in.”
Her apartment was small and bare.
I turned to her. “What is going on? What is he doing?”
Laura let out a short, bitter laugh. “Being Jack. Taking the easy way out.”
“What does that mean?”
“He owes me money. A lot. Debt from our marriage. I’ve been trying to collect for over a year. Lawyers, notices, payment plans—everything. His solution is you.”
“What?”
Laura looked me straight in the eye. “You have a good job. A nice house. Good credit. Stability. A life already built. He marries you, and that becomes his.”
My throat went dry.
“And just so you know,” she added, “I told him marrying money isn’t a solution. I told him to get a job and pay me back properly.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “He has a job.”
She looked at me with something close to pity. “No, he doesn’t. He was fired for misusing company funds when we were married. Since then, he’s just drifted.”
“That’s not true. He works—”
“Where? Doing what?” she asked. “What’s his boss’s name? Who does he work with? What’s the worst part of his day?”
I had no answers.
Laura walked to a drawer, pulled out a stack of papers, and handed me one.
“Final demand notice,” she said. “He met me today to ask for more time. He said, ‘Once I get married, things will be different.’”
