My husband was so busy playing at romance with his assistant that he didn’t notice I had stopped trying to save our marriage. When he said, “When we get back, we’ll have a child and start over from scratch,” I simply nodded.
“Mrs. Bennett, please don’t worry. I’ll make sure your husband is taken care of tonight.”
Vanessa Parker’s voice was almost too calm.
I had been sitting alone for nearly an hour at a table set for two, watching the ice around a bottle of champagne slowly melt into water.
Ethan had ordered that champagne for our anniversary.
Since the day we married, he had never forgotten the date.
Until that night.
It was also the first time his new assistant had ever answered his phone.
“There’s no need for that,” I said. “Just tell me where you are. I’ll come get him myself.”
Vanessa gave me the name of a quiet Manhattan restaurant, the kind where one dinner could cost what some families spent on groceries for a week.
The moment I walked inside, I knew things were worse than I had imagined.
There was no business dinner.
Only two people sat at the table.
Ethan’s tie was loose.
His eyes were glassy from alcohol.
An empty wineglass sat in front of him.
Vanessa was close beside him, leaning over his arm while carefully wiping something from his shirt sleeve.
A waiter approached with hot water and smiled.
“Does your boyfriend need anything else?”
Vanessa looked directly at me.
“That’s his wife.”
The silence afterward hurt more than the waiter’s mistake.
Two years earlier, I had been confident, ambitious, newly graduated, and preparing to continue my education overseas.
Now I had spent months taking hormones, vitamins, and countless remedies my mother-in-law insisted would help me conceive.
My face was constantly swollen.
My body had changed.
I had abandoned my career to stay beside Ethan while he recovered from injuries caused by an old accident.
Vanessa, meanwhile, looked like she belonged in a fashion campaign.
Watching her help him stand, I finally understood why her social media had recently been filled with expensive dinners, bouquets, glasses of wine, and photographs taken inside my husband’s office.
On the ride home, Ethan rested his head against my shoulder.
“Did my wife come?” he murmured sleepily.
Once, that question would have softened me.
Then I smelled roses on his jacket.
It wasn’t my perfume.
I moved away.
That night, my mother-in-law, Diane, practically ordered me to make soup for Ethan’s hangover.
“A good wife takes care of her husband.”
While I stirred the soup, my phone vibrated.
Vanessa had posted something new.
“Someone bruised my heart a little tonight. Tomorrow I’ll be fine.”
I smiled.
She thought she was playing a game I didn’t understand.
She was wrong.
When I was seven, I watched my father leave my mother for another woman.
After the divorce, everyone was horrified when I chose to live with him because he had more money.
Nobody understood why.
From inside my father’s home, I could slowly help recover some of what my mother had lost.
I learned very early that crying rarely changes the rules.
Understanding the rules does.
