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Mattie—"
    Oh, how Mattie resented the sound of her name on this stranger’s tongue. This stranger who was using Wes’s phone to call her and invade her own personal space. “Don’t call me that. I’m Mrs. Bishop.”
    “I’m phoning as a favor,” the unknown woman continued, ignoring the correction. “I’m sure it’s hard, but you have to let Wes go without a fight. He doesn’t love you anymore. You may find that hard to believe, but it’s true. Trust me.”
    This—couldn’t be happening. Mattie sputtered at the effrontery. And then anger exploded. “Trust you? Who the hell are you? ”
    The phone went dead.
    Mattie glared at the screen which had suddenly gone pale, then hit the “End” button with a shaking finger.
    Had it occurred to her that there might be another woman in the picture? Of course.
    But, just as she avoided the problem signs in her and Wes’s marriage, so too had she shied away from thinking about the possibility he was having an affair.
    But clearly he was. Or at least he was on the verge.
    The key she’d found that morning. Maybe it hadn’t been for the Wilkinson’s cottage at all, but a room where he’d been meeting this mystery woman?
    Her body reacted then, not with tears, but with a sudden, violent need to purge. Mattie ran to the bathroom getting there just in time as her body rejected everything she’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours, the way her mind wanted to reject everything that had happened in that same span of time.
    When it was over, she felt weak, trembling... and very cold.
    She ran a hot bath for herself, and let herself be soothed by the scented water.
    She would not let that woman get to her. This was her life and she was the one who was in control.
    Wes could leave her, he could sleep around, he could even fall in love with someone else—she couldn’t change any of that. What she could control was the way she reacted.
    And the most important thing, she realized, as she was toweling off and selecting clean clothes, was being a strong mother.
    * * *
    “D o you think something’s wrong with Mom?”
    Portia glanced at the message, then turned her phone face down on her desk. She was in her Introduction to Psychology class—and the instructor was her Aunt Dani.
    One of the reasons she’d decided to come to the University of Washington was to be close to her aunt. Her mom thought it was good for her to move away from Montana—expand her horizons and all of that. But Portia hadn’t admitted that she felt nervous about being on her own.
    Ideally she and Wren would have gone to the same school, maybe even been roommates in the same sorority house.
    But Wren wouldn’t go for that.
    Wren had chosen to go to school in Colorado. As for sororities—Wren claimed she had no time for them.
    Being a twin should have been so fun, but it seemed to Portia that Wren was always trying to push away from her. If Portia chose shoes in red, then Wren would pick black. When Portia decided to grow out her bangs, Wren had cropped hers.
    Why was she so determined to be different? Probably because she was embarrassed. Wren had always been the smart one, and Portia suffered in any comparison between the two.
    At least coming to Seattle had proven to be a good decision. First, she’d been thrilled to discover she was actually going to be in a class taught by her aunt. She’d been worried there might be rules against that, but Aunt Dani had assured her that since the assignments and exams were all marked by TAs—teaching assistants—there wasn’t any conflict of interest.
    Dani had always been Portia’s favorite aunt. Dani was so sophisticated, with beautiful clothes and an elegant way about her. She’d always been really sweet to her and Wren, bringing them gifts when she came to visit and listening to them like they were real people, not just mini versions of their mother—which was how Callan treated them sometimes.
    Since she’d made the decision to attend UW her aunt