Chương 3
Emma climbed under the blanket.
“Did Dad cheat on you?”
Rachel turned her head.
Nine.
Her daughter was nine years old.
“Where did you hear that word?”
“At school.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Did he?”
Rachel looked toward the dark window.
There was no right answer.
“Yes.”
Emma was quiet.
“With that lady?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
“Does the boy know us?”
Rachel thought of the message.
He already knows who you are.
“He knows about us.”
Emma pulled the blanket higher.
“Does he hate us?”
The question startled Rachel.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. But I don’t think he has any reason to.”
“Maybe he thinks Dad picked us.”
Rachel could not breathe for a second.
Emma stared at the ceiling.
“Maybe that’s why he knows who we are.”
Rachel reached for her daughter’s hand.
Emma let her hold it but did not move closer.
After a while she said, “I don’t want Sophie to know all of it.”
Rachel looked at her.
“She’s seven.”
“I know. She gets stomachaches when she’s nervous.”
Rachel closed her eyes.
Her children had been learning one another while she and Daniel had been busy believing they were the experts.
“Okay,” Rachel whispered.
Emma squeezed her hand once.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to have the baby early because of this?”
Rachel turned toward her.
“No.”
“You don’t know.”
“No,” Rachel said. “I don’t.”
Emma nodded.
For some reason, that answer seemed to calm her.
The next morning, Daniel sent Rachel a text at 6:03.
I’ll tell you everything. No minimizing. No excuses. Whatever you need.
Rachel stared at it while brushing her teeth.
She did not answer.
At seven, Sophie refused cereal because Emma had told her milk was bad when adults were upset, a theory Emma denied inventing. Lily wanted to know whether Owen liked dinosaurs. Mia insisted on wearing rain boots though the sky was clear.
Dana stayed.
“I called in sick,” she said.
“You’re not sick.”
“I’m emotionally contagious.”
Rachel looked at her.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I know.”
Dana poured coffee.
Rachel found herself staring at the empty space on the counter where Daniel usually left his mug.
He had a habit of abandoning coffee when it became slightly cooler than he liked, then microwaving it three times and still forgetting it. Rachel had teased him about it for years.
The absence of the mug felt indecently intimate.
At ten, Rachel called her obstetrician.
She described the stress, the tightening she had felt the night before, the fact that the baby was moving normally. A nurse asked routine questions, none of which included whether Rachel’s husband had secretly fathered a child during a previous pregnancy.
She was told to hydrate, rest, monitor symptoms, and come in if anything changed.
Rachel obeyed the hydration part because it was easier than deciding what to do with her marriage.
At eleven thirty, Daniel emailed her.
The subject line was: Timeline.
Rachel did not open it until twelve fifteen.
When she did, she read it twice.
The affair had begun seven years earlier, three months after Sophie was born.
That contradicted what Daniel had said on the porch.
Rachel read the sentence again.
After Sophie was born.
Not while Rachel was pregnant.
She should have felt relieved.
Instead she felt another kind of fury.
The distinction mattered, but Daniel had allowed her to believe something worse because he had been too frightened to correct her. Or too overwhelmed. Or because the timeline in his own head had been rearranged by years of lying.
Claire had worked with him on a six-month consulting project. The affair had lasted approximately five months. Daniel said he ended it. Claire resigned shortly afterward and moved to another company.
She contacted him almost two years later.
Owen was eighteen months old.
She told Daniel he might be the father.
A DNA test confirmed it shortly after Owen’s second birthday.
Daniel had begun paying support voluntarily after consulting an attorney. No court order existed. Claire had not asked him to leave Rachel. She had asked him to acknowledge Owen privately and help financially.
At first, Daniel saw Owen four or five times a year.
Then more frequently.
He had told Rachel some of those absences were business trips.
The Chicago lie had begun because Daniel actually did travel to Chicago several times each year, making it useful camouflage.
Rachel stopped reading.
Useful camouflage.
Daniel had not written those words.
She had.
She got up and walked to the laundry room.
Nothing needed washing.
She opened the dryer.
A fitted sheet sat twisted around three pillowcases.
Rachel pulled it out and began folding it.
Halfway through, she became angry at the sheet.
She threw it onto the dryer.
Dana, passing the doorway, looked inside.
“Sheet win?”
“Get out.”
Dana nodded.
“Fair.”
Rachel sat on the floor.
Seven years earlier, Sophie had cried almost every evening between six and nine. Rachel had been exhausted, bleeding longer than expected after delivery, frightened by how little affection she sometimes felt for a baby she loved desperately. Daniel had begun staying late at work.
He had said he was trying to protect Rachel from financial stress.
One Thursday night he had brought home Thai food and apologized for being gone so much.
Rachel remembered sitting on the couch with Sophie asleep against her chest while Daniel fed her noodles because both her hands were occupied.
She had thought it was tenderness.
Perhaps it had been.
That was the problem.
A person could betray you and still have fed you dinner.
At two, Claire Mercer called.
Rachel stared at the unfamiliar number until it stopped.
A text appeared.
This is Claire. I’m sorry. I know sorry doesn’t mean much from me. I won’t contact you again if you don’t want me to. I only need you to know Owen did not send those messages and I did not show him your private information.
May you like
Rachel read it three times.
Then she called.
