Page 3 of The Five Year Lie

I lift my head and find Hester, my uncle’s assistant, right in my path. She’s an attractive middle-aged woman with a sleek gray pixie cut and a noticeable addiction to wrap dresses.

She’s also grumpy as hell. My uncle and I are both a little afraid of her. “Sorry,” I say quickly.

Scowling, she trots up the open stairway to the second floor, which is the nerve center of Chime Co.

It takes me a moment to lock my bike to the rack under the stairs before I follow her up to the second floor, where I step into a vast office space that’s already mostly full of computer programmers, managers and support staff.

This is Chime Co., the largest tech company in Maine and the number two manufacturer of doorbell cameras in the country. Years ago, my father and his brother founded the company in my uncle’s basement. But now there are hundreds of employees—so many that Uncle Ray just bought the office building so that we could expand to two more floors.

I’m the office manager. My hours are flexible, and the work isn’t very taxing. I don’t mind it, but I’ll never be Chime Co.’s employee of the month, either.

Case in point—the conference room is already filling up with programmers for the Monday meeting, but there’s no way I’m going in there without coffee. So I head for the coffee counter on the far wall.

Skilled programmers are always in short supply, and must be wooed by perks like good coffee and snacks. The job of stocking these goodies falls to me, which means the coffee isexcellent, and there’s a bevy of complements in the mini fridge, including hipster choices like oat milk and flavored creams.

I make myself a latte before heading into the meeting. The only open seat in the conference room is next to Hester, who gives me a fresh scowl as I sit down.

In return, I beam at her. She hates that.

At the head of the table, my uncle is already opening the meeting. Without breaking his cadence, he nods hello to me, his expression friendly, in spite of my tardiness.

It’s a cushy job. I’ll own my privilege.

I dig into my shoulder bag for my planner and a pen. Usually the content of these meetings has little to do with me, but we’re in the middle of an office move, so I have to at least feign attention.

Then, as one of the programmers launches into a lengthy update, my phone chimes loudly with a text.

Oops.

I could ignore it and pretend that intrusion came from someone else’s phone. As one does. But I never ignore texts when Buzz is at school. Emergencies are rare, but there was a stomach bug last year and—even worse—a head lice incident this fall.

Lord in heaven, let it not be lice again.

Under Hester’s judgmental gaze, I pull out my phone and check the message.

But it’s not the school. In fact, the name on the screen stops me in my tracks.

Drew Miller.

I blink. But when my vision clears, his picture is still there—a photo I took of the two of us at sunset in Fort Allen Park. And when I read the text message, I stop breathing.

Drew: There’s trouble. I need to see you. Meet me in one hour under the candelabra tree. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going.

That message would rattle me coming from anyone. But coming from Drew, it’s heart-stopping.

Because Drew Miller, the only man I ever loved, and the father of my child, is dead.

2

FIVE YEARS AGO, JUNE

The girl across the aisle looks up suddenly, forcing Drew to flick his eyes back onto his own monitor.

Way to be smooth, he chides himself.

He drags his eyes back to his work. He’s struggling to concentrate on the lines of code on his screen, and for all the wrong reasons.

People-watching is part of his mission at Chime Co. He needs to learn every single thing about the way this place works. He wants all the office gossip. And he needs to understand how deeply the feud between the two founders runs.