Page 152 of Traces Of You

“No,” she said. “I’m cutting out paper hearts.”

“Seriously? School doesn’t start for another month,” Cassidy said.

Meredith shrugged. She couldn’t help that she loved her job and enjoyed arts and crafts. She had an entire room dedicated to her projects.

Nothing wrong with planning out activities for the five-year-olds she’d be teaching.

It wasn’t as if she had much more to do on a Sunday afternoon.

“I’m having fun. Don’t pop my balloon.”

Cassidy snorted. “Sorry, but I’m about to crash your air balloon to the ground and I’m really sorry about that.”

She put the scissors down on the kitchen counter where she’d been standing while she worked.

“What’s going on?”

“Go sit, Meredith. I mean it. I don’t need you tripping or hitting your head, swinging your arms and breaking a finger on a wall. None of that.”

She laughed. Pretty sad that her reputation as a klutz preceded her.

She marched over to the couch and flopped down. “There. I’m sitting.”

“Where is Fredrick this weekend?”

“He’s at a conference. He should be home soon. I think it was ending this morning.”

Her boyfriend of two years had moved into her two-story townhouse in Lake George last year.

“A work conference?” Cassidy asked.

“Yes,” she said. She didn’t lose her patience often, but it was quickly diminishing. “What’s going on?”

“I’m sending you a picture,” Cassidy said. “I don’t want to say until I know more.”

“Okaaaay,” she said, drawing the word out. Her phone went off and a picture of Fredrick popped up with a coworker. “That’s Lana. They work together. Who took that?”

“My brother,” Cassidy said. “He saw Fredrick and this woman out last night.”

Her eyebrows rose. “That’s odd that your brother was in Syracuse and noticed my boyfriend.” Fredrick might have only met Cassidy’s brother three times total. If that.

“It was his stupid laugh,” Cassidy said. “He heard it and looked around. And it wasn’t in Syracuse, but Albany.”

Meredith focused her mind on Fredrick’s laugh that always got under her skin, her nerves stretching taut when he let it out in his enthusiasm. The high-pitched squeal was more irritating than her classroom full of kids the day before Christmas break.

“Maybe I messed up where he was going,” she said. “I thought he said Syracuse, but that could have been last month.”

Though it wouldn’t make sense for him to have to stay the night if it was only an hour away.

“I doubt it,” Cassidy said. “You never mess up those things.”

She didn’t. “I don’t understand what is going on.”

“Bryan was at a couple’s retreat this weekend with his wife,” Cassidy said. “That’s where he saw Fredrick and that woman.”

Her shoulders slumped, her stomach lurched, and her eyes filled. “You’re mistaken.”

“No,” Cassidy said. “Brace yourself, another picture is coming. When Bryan texted me that first one last night, I told him to take as many as he could because I knew you wouldn’t believe me. You trust too easily and never think anyone has an evil side.”