No Accident by Dan Webb Page B

him. No one heard him.
    Alex woke up sweating. These dreams weren’t fair—he was always the bad guy. Alex remembered the indelicate way Del had broken the news that Pamela was cheating on him: “Dude, your fiancée’s sleeping with this dude I know.”
    She didn’t deny it when he confronted her. In fact, she was almost eager to confirm her infidelity. What a contrast to the modest, almost shy girl he fell in love with.
    He first fell for her light brown hair and nerdy glasses. She didn’t realize how pretty she was, which was refreshing, and though she could talk all day to a class of second-graders, she sometimes got tongue-tied around people her own age. She was tongue-tied around Alex at first. It was endearing, and Alex felt like a hero for making her comfortable around others and giving her confidence.
    After two months, he introduced her to his family, and she got along with them as if she’d known them her whole life. Mom loved her and was delighted they had so much in common. They were both schoolteachers, they both liked sappy movies. Less in common than you think, Mom , Alex thought, looking back.
    After a year, they weren’t yet talking about marriage, but it was clear they were moving in that direction. Everything got more serious. Pamela wanted Alex to be more financially secure. Alex wanted that, too. By then he had quit The Chronicle , in part because he hoped he could eventually make more money in the insurance industry, maybe move into management. Alex was aware that part of his motivation for making money was recovering some of the status his family lost when his father was convicted of fraud.
    But Pamela didn’t have Alex’s adventurous nature —or foolhardiness—when it came to his real estate investments. She thought it was cool when Alex bought his first investment property—she was dating a sexy wheeler-dealer. The second investment was less popular—shouldn’t they pay down the mortgages on the first investment property and the house by the beach a little first? She was vocally nervous about the next investment property, but Alex explained his rationale over and over until she acquiesced.
    Before they got engaged, Pamela made Alex promise not to buy any more houses. But three months later, the market was still red hot, and Alex got a call from a broker about an opportunity that looked great on paper and would be gone in a day if Alex didn’t take it. So Alex took it.
    Pamela felt betrayed, of course, but Alex sat with her for four hours that night, talking about their future together, and Alex explained how all his investments were meant to jump-start their nest egg so that he could provide her with the financial stability that she needed. There was a lot of soft crying on her part—she was never a screamer—but by the end of the evening, she wasn’t upset anymore, and she said that she loved and trusted him. That was what Alex needed to hear. He believed it, and he’d learned his lesson—no more houses, he promised himself. Alex’s aggressive investing had been the source of a lingering quiet conflict between them, and Alex felt like bringing the issue out into the open had strengthened their relationship as they prepared for marriage. He was wrong about that.
    A month later, Del saw Pamela leaving the house of one of his low-life gambling buddies. It turned out he had chatted her up when she and Alex and some friends had gone to one of Del’s parties early on in their relationship and Alex had left early. After Alex’s final house investment, this dude saw her out with her girlfriends one night and tried to re-make her acquaintance. And she was willing. And now Alex felt like his insides had been crushed.
    Del told Alex at the time that it was for the best, that he’d never really liked Pamela anyway, and that in a year Alex would look back and laugh about the whole thing. Well, it had been a year, and Alex still didn’t get the joke.
    His five houses were still a constant