“Why?”
She shrugged.
“A fresh start.”
“I wasn’t looking for one.”
“Sometimes people need them anyway.”
She took a drink.
Then she looked directly at me.
“You and Robert haven’t exactly seemed happy lately.”
The room became very quiet.
The coffee machine clicked off behind me.
“My marriage isn’t your concern.”
Her smile remained.
“I’m just saying, maybe some space wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because everyone can feel the tension.”
“Everyone?”
She tilted her head.
“Don’t you think pretending gets exhausting?”
There it was.
Not proof.
Not even close.
But something personal enough to make my skin go cold.
Sloan knew too much.
Not about the transfer.
About my marriage.
I put the untouched coffee down.
“Be careful, Sloan.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“About what?”
“Confusing access with importance.”
For the first time, her smile disappeared.
I walked out before she could answer.
That night, Robert came home after nine.
He said the board meeting had gone long.
I didn’t tell him about Sloan.
Instead, after he went upstairs, I opened my work laptop and logged into the security panel available to senior technical staff.
I could not see individual employee identities without special permissions, but I could see my own account activity.
Thursday.
2:47 p.m.
There it was.
Successful login.
Internal network.
Request submitted.
I saved a copy.
Then I checked the endpoint information.
Marketing floor.
My hands went still on the keyboard.
There were dozens of computers in marketing.
It proved almost nothing by itself.
But it proved something.
Someone had submitted the request from the exact department where Sloan worked.
I took a screenshot.
Then another memory returned.
Three weeks earlier, Sloan had appeared at my desk around lunch.
“My laptop is updating forever,” she’d said. “Can I borrow yours for five minutes? I just need to send something before a meeting.”
I had been sorting printed diagrams beside my desk.
I told her yes.
My employee portal had been open.
At the time, lending her my laptop had felt as ordinary as lending someone a pen.
Now I sat in the dark, remembering her alone at my desk for six or seven minutes.
I closed the computer.
Robert was already asleep when I went upstairs.
He lay facing away from me.
For the first time in eight years, I looked at the space between our pillows and wondered if it had been telling me something long before I was ready to hear it.
Over the next week, I did everything the proper way.
I met with my manager, Greg.
I documented the meeting during which the request had been submitted.
I sent HR the names of everyone who could verify where I had been.
I changed every password I owned.
I asked IT to preserve the relevant logs.
Greg was sympathetic but cautious.
“The problem,” he said, “is that Houston now considers you committed.”
“I never committed.”
“I understand.”
“No, you understand that I’m saying it. That’s different.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“HR is investigating.”
“And while they investigate?”
“You need to decide whether you’re preparing to go.”
Outside Greg’s office, Sloan passed me carrying a tablet.
She slowed just enough to smile.
“Still here?”
Two words.
Perfectly ordinary.
My stomach tightened.
That evening, I told Robert what I had found.
“The request came from marketing.”
He kept reading the document in front of him.
“Marketing has seventy people.”
“Sloan borrowed my laptop three weeks ago.”
Now he looked up.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Turn this into another Sloan issue.”
“Another?”
“You know what I mean.”
“No, actually, I don’t.”
He shut the folder.
“You’re building a theory because you already dislike her.”
“I don’t dislike her.”
“You absolutely dislike her.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“Based on what? Her perfume? Her jokes?”
“Based on the fact that she knows personal things about our marriage.”
Robert’s jaw tightened.
“What personal things?”
“She told me we don’t seem happy.”
“People notice things.”
“How would she know enough to tell me a transfer might be good because it would give us space?”
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But I saw it.
“You talked to her about us.”
Robert stood.
“I talk to a lot of people.”
“Did you talk to her about us?”
“We’ve had conversations.”
“About our marriage?”