Chương 11
“That it looks like I never loved you.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Scout scratched once at the door.
“You don’t get to ask the video to prove you loved me,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Evan rubbed both hands over his face. “Can we talk with someone? A counselor. Not to fix it, if you don’t want that. To talk.”
“I have a lawyer.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“Do you want a divorce?”
She watched the question register on his face after he asked it.
“I want you to leave the porch.”
“Mara.”
“Take the clothes.”
He stood slowly.
Scout whined.
Evan looked at the door. “Tell him I love him.”
“He’s a dog.”
“He knows.”
Mara ended the call.
She waited until his car left before opening the door. Scout sniffed the porch, found nothing, and looked up at her.
“He loves you,” Mara said.
Scout sneezed.
The next week was filled with ordinary humiliations.
Mara changed the emergency contact on her medical portal. She removed Evan from the approved pickup list at the dog daycare. She called the insurance agent and learned she could not alter the homeowners policy until they agreed who would remain in the house. She met with a financial adviser who used the phrase liquidity event to describe the sale of her father’s home.
At work, she supervised the unpacking of nineteenth-century textile samples while colleagues pretended not to notice that she no longer wore her wedding ring.
She had removed it Wednesday morning because her finger had swollen overnight. She placed it in a porcelain dish beside the bathroom sink. Each time she brushed her teeth, she checked that it was still there.
Her closest friend, Kendra, learned about the affair from Evan before Mara told her.
Kendra called Thursday evening.
“Why am I hearing from Paul that you and Evan separated months ago?”
Mara stood in the grocery store, holding a bag of dog food. “Who is Paul?”
“Evan’s golf friend with the teeth.”
“They all have teeth.”
“You know who I mean.”
“We did not separate.”
“That’s what I said. Paul told me Evan has been staying in the guest room since spring.”
“He has never stayed in the guest room except when he had the flu.”
“I knew it.”
“You knew because I just told you.”
“I knew because he hates that mattress.”
Mara placed the dog food in her cart. “Evan had an affair.”
Kendra went silent.
“With a woman named Tessa. I saw them at the airport.”
“You saw them?”
“He was telling me he was in Atlanta.”
“Mara.”
“I recorded it.”
“You have to send me that.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not entertainment.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
A store employee wheeled a pallet of bottled water past Mara. She moved her cart aside.
Kendra lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. I’m furious.”
“So am I.”
“Are you leaving him?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
The question hurt more because Kendra asked it without cruelty.
Mara looked at shelves of canned dog food, each label promising a different kind of health.
“I know what happened,” she said. “I don’t know what I can live with.”
“You can’t live with that.”
“I’m already living with it.”
Kendra sighed. “That came out wrong.”
“Everything comes out wrong lately.”
“Send me the video.”
“No.”
“Then at least tell people the truth. He’s telling everyone you were basically done.”
“Who is everyone?”
“Paul. Alyssa. Maybe Dorian.”
Mara put the wrong size bag of dog food into her cart, noticed, and exchanged it.
“Let him talk,” she said.
“That’s easy to say until his version becomes the version.”
“I have proof.”
“Proof nobody sees is just pain with a password.”
Mara stopped moving.
Kendra said, “I’m sorry. That was dramatic.”
“It was accurate.”
“Post it.”
“No.”
“Why are you protecting him?”
“I’m not.”
“It looks like you are.”
“There’s another person in the video.”
“The woman sleeping with your husband?”
“She has a son.”
Kendra made a frustrated sound. “You’re worried about everybody except yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then what are you doing for yourself?”
Mara looked at the cart containing dog food, coffee, milk, and a frozen lasagna she did not want.
“Buying groceries,” she said.
Kendra did not laugh.
Mara promised to call later and did not.
That night, she watched the airport video again.
She noticed something new.
When Evan looked up, Tessa stepped away before he spoke. She looked at his face, then at Mara, then at the luggage. Her expression was not guilt alone. It was recognition. A person discovering that the floor beneath her had been painted to resemble solid ground.
Mara closed the video.
She called Tessa.
“I’m sorry,” Tessa said when she answered. “I didn’t expect you.”
“Did Evan contact you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That you were using me to punish him.”
“I haven’t asked you to do anything.”
“I told him that.”
“What else?”
“He said you knew about the apartment.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know.”
Mara sat on the floor beside Scout’s bed. “He’s telling people we were separated.”
“He told people at his office that too.”
“How do you know?”
“A coworker asked me whether the divorce was final. I hadn’t told her about us.”
“Who told her?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
Mara rubbed Scout’s shoulder. “Are you still protecting him?”
Tessa was quiet.
“Yes,” she said finally. “In some ways.”
“Why?”
“Because I was involved. If I make him the only liar, I get to pretend I didn’t ignore things.”
“What things?”
“He never let me come to the house. He didn’t introduce me to friends who had known him longer than a year. He took calls from you in another room but came back smiling. He said you were difficult, but he kept talking about you.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t think that would help.”
May you like
“I didn’t ask if it would help.”
Tessa inhaled slowly. “He said you cut apples too thin because you liked them to snap. He said you hated open cabinet doors. He said you could identify any song from the first three seconds but never knew the lyrics.”
