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Chapter 1

The stranger didn’t shatter Adam’s world all at once

That hat Adam Price would tell hiht away, right from the very first sentence, that the life he had known as a content suburban one It was a si in the tone, so, that let Ada would ever be the same

“You didn’t have to stay with her,” the stranger said

They were in the Aion Hall in Cedarfield, New Jersey Cedarfield was a town loaded up ealthy hedge fund ers and bankers and other financial masters-of-the-universe types They liked to drink beer in the A, a way to pretend that they were salt-of-the-earth good ol’ boys, like so but

Adam stood by the sticky bar There was a dartboard behind hins advertised Miller Lite, but Adaht hand He turned to the h Ada to me?”

The guy was younger thanblue eyes His ar beneath one of the short sleeves He earing a baseball cap He wasn’t quite a hipster, but there was souy who ran a tech department and never saw the sun

The piercing blue eyes held Adam’s with an earnestness that nant, right?”

Adahten

“That’s why you stayed Corinne told you she was pregnant”

It was right then that Adao off in his chest, as if soital timer on some movie bomb and now it had started to tick down Tick, tick, tick, tick

“Do I know you?” Adam asked

“She told you she was pregnant,” the stranger continued “Corinne, I nant and then she lost the baby”

The A those white baseball T-shirts with the three-quarter sleeves and either baggy cargo shorts or perfectly no-assed Dad jeans Lots of theht was the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade boys’ lacrosse draft and A-tea as such in their natural habitat, Adaet involved in their own offsprings’ team selections The Discovery Channel should film this

“You felt obligated to stay, aht?” the man asked

“I don’t knoho the hell—”

“She lied, Adaer h he knew for certain but that, at the end of the day, he had Adam’s best interest at heart “Corinne nant”

The words kept landing like punches, dazing Ada hiht count He wanted to fight back, grab the guy by the shirt, toss hi his wife like this But he didn’t for two reasons

One, there was the whole dazed-like-taking-punches, sapped-resistance thing

Two, souy’s confident tone, the daht be smartest to listen

“Who are you?” Adam asked

“Does it matter?”

“Yeah, it does”