I Found a Note in My Husband’s Shirt That Said, ‘Please Don’t Let Her Find Out’

“Delilah,” I said, hesitating longer than I meant to.

“Of course you are.”

There was another pause, longer this time.

“Of course? You sound very certain for someone who has never met me.”

“I suppose I do owe you the truth,” she said, exhaling slowly.

“I would prefer it, Allison,” I said, keeping my voice even, though my fingers had curled tightly around the phone.

“I am not who you think I am,” she said. “Your daughter hired me.”

Her words landed harder than I expected. What on earth would my daughter want from that woman?

“My daughter? Serenity? What did she… what did she ask you to do?”

“She said that your husband had been acting distant and that she’d noticed it. She was worried. She asked me to look into it.”

“Look into it, how? Do you work with Ron?”

“I am a private investigator, Delilah. This is what I do.”

I pressed my free hand against the table, as if to ground myself.

“Then explain the note.”

“It was a mistake,” she said, sighing deeply. “But it wasn’t mine. Can you meet me?”

We met at a coffee shop the following afternoon, the kind with too many potted plants and soft music meant to encourage conversation.

Allison arrived first. She wore a green wool coat and a silver clip in her hair. She looked older than I expected.

“You don’t look… You’re not what I expected,” I said as I sat down.

“Oh, I hear that often.”

I ordered a latte; she asked for peppermint tea. I noticed her hands when she wrapped them around the mug.

“I’m going to need you to explain the note. And Serenity calling you… Allison, I need to know everything.”

“I met with Ron,” she said. “Once. He didn’t know your daughter had hired me until I told him why I was asking questions.”

“And then?”

“He panicked. He said he hadn’t done anything wrong in years. He wrote that note as a reminder, and he asked me to keep it to myself. The ‘she’ is Serenity, your daughter, not you.”

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