Cellar Door

I’ve seen women devastated by a cheating spouse. Their whole life shattered in one meeting. I doubt Jennifer will shed a tear. Too worried she’d smudge her Dior mascara.

I envy Jennifer, and so many people like her their boring and drama-free lives.

My story might not be an original one, but it’s a painful story just the same. My small family was torn apart by drugs. I suffered the deep-seated kind of pain, the torment of loss, where you don’t want the next minute to pass, fearful of what the future will punish you with next.

Instead of letting that loss consume me, I took my pain to the police precinct and found a way to channel it.

Then I found someone to get lost with.

What life has taught me—what it continues to teach me—is that if you’re breathing, you’re fighting. Even if it feels like death.

Growing pains. My insides are marred with the metaphorical stretch marks of personal growth.

The woman in my office doesn’t sit at her window and focus on breathing through the storm. But that’s okay. There’s a place for everyone. If you’re not one of the Jennifers of the world, then you’re the other type.

The me type.

I try not to let that reality make me rife with bitter resentment.

I try.

“How often are men actually caught?” Jennifer asks, bringing my attention back on her and her dilemma.

A lot of women come to me because they want their suspicions, their gut instincts, to be proven wrong. They don’t want to do the dirty deep dive into their husband’s lives themselves, fearful of what they’ll uncover.

I’m like an interpreter of sorts. They see the signs, sometimes even the proof, but they need me to decipher the meaning—to make it absolutely clear, leaving them with no doubt.

I’m paid to give broken people confirmation that their relationship may be over.

I always tell them exactly what I’m about to tell Jennifer Myer: “If you’re here, then you probably already know the truth.”

Which in Jennifer’s case is cha-ching to her ears. She picks up her Prada purse from the floor and stands over my desk. “Milton is going away on a business trip tomorrow. You can come by the house then, but I would like you to start tonight.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“Milton will want to see his…mistress,” she says, “before he leaves town. That makes sense, no?”

“Sure. Logically. I can start right now.”

“Good.” She secures my services with a check, which covers the four GPS trackers and monitoring for a month. Any field work I’ll bill out in hourly increments.

“Thank you, Ms. Davies.” The title has a niggling sting in her snide tone. Which really, that’s more on me than her. Jennifer has no idea that I’m used to being addressed as Detective Davies.

Used to, I mean. I wasn’t a detective for long, but I had gotten used to the title.

“Makenna is fine,” I say.

“All right, Makenna. Please report any updates to the cell number I gave you.”

Her secret phone—the one her husband doesn’t know about—that I’m sure is being used for her own tawdry affairs. But, hey, who am I to judge? The check she just wrote will pay my rent for three months.

As she climbs into the elevator, complaining about having to use the rusty old building lift, I swivel my chair to face the row of windows that highlight the Seattle cityscape.

Six months ago, I’d have balked at the idea of becoming a private investigator. Hell, I’d have been insulted. It’s depressing what we accept when our options are limited.

In as little as five years with the Seattle PD, I made detective, and I lost the position in under a year. The soggy bottom just fell out from beneath my feet.

The patter of rain plinks against the windowpanes. Before the storm builds into a downpour, I grab my bag and jacket and head out. More reconnaissance on Milton Myer is needed, and now I’m getting paid to dig into the man.