According to one friend, the 42-year-old real estate entrepreneur struck up a relationship with Scarlett Carnahan when she was working as a waitress at the Lazy Daizy diner in Tribeca.

At the time, Carnahan was struggling to find acting work, and needed a new place to live after roommates evicted her from her apartment in Queens.

“Evan befriended her, let her stay in an apartment he owned nearby, even gave her a job managing some of his real estate,” the friend said. “He helped her find a new agent, who got her some acting gigs. Eventually they started dating, in a casual kind of way. Letty then invited her younger sister, who’d been living and working in Atlanta, to visit her in New York.”

But as soon as Tanya Carnahan arrived in the city, the friend said, everything changed.

“Evan fell hard for that girl. Letty, obviously, was furious. It caused a serious rift between the two sisters. They didn’t speak for years.”

Maya patted her knee and held up her juice box. “All done.”

“Okay,” Letty said, taking the empty box. “Would you like some Goldfish?”

“Pees,” Maya said, holding out a rather grubby hand. Letty took the bag of cheddar crackers from her backpack and poured some into the child’s hand.

“What do you say?” Letty prompted.

Maya shoved all the crackers into her mouth and chewed happily. “Fank you,” she said, sending showers of orange crumbs down the front of her swimsuit.

Letty resumed reading the Daily News story, fuming. She knew exactly which of Evan’s bitchy pals the reporter had quoted.

Sascha Hallowell was married to Evan’s Princeton classmate Skipper. She’d pretended to like Letty, but as Tanya later confided, “She thinks we’re both a couple of hillbilly hayseeds. What Sascha doesn’t know is that good ol’ Skippy tried to put his hand up my skirt the last time we had dinner at their place.”

Letty could picture the sneer on Sascha’s face when she referred to Tanya as “that girl.”

She was scanning the rest of the story when she spotted Ava’s son Joe sauntering out of the motel office toward the parking lot. She watched as he walked slowly through the parked vehicles, stopping behind her Kia. He took out his phone and clicked off a few frames of the license plate, did a slow circle around the car, then got in his own truck and drove away.

Letty froze. She thought she’d been so smart buying that car. After renting a car at Newark Airport the previous Sunday night, she’d driven as far south as Raleigh, North Carolina, before checking into a fleabag motel.