I hated him. I was bored with him. I wanted passion and excitement, which were the antithesis of him. Forget him dumping me—I should have left him years ago.
By the time the front door of the building swung open and Mike walked out, I was teetering on an emotional tightrope and close to falling off. He crossed the lawn slowly, his dark tie held in place by his left hand, his glasses on instead of his contacts. The wind whipped the legs of his charcoal pants, and his pale-blue dress shirt still held the iron creases along his forearms. He met my eyes through the windshield and held them, and I could see the wary uncertainty in his step as he crossed over a low border shrub and approached the passenger side of my car. He opened the door and lowered himself inside, then quietly and carefully closed it.
A beat of silence lingered. Stretched. My hands were trembling, and I tucked them underneath my thighs to hide the weakness. “Tell me why.”
He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and his lack of reaction told me everything I needed to know. He was guilty. The only question was how long this had been going on and to what depth his emotional investment extended.
My chest thickened and I pinned my lips together and prayed he couldn’t see the vulnerability on my face.
“I don’t have an excuse, Lill. It was just . . .” He paused. “A series of bad decisions.”
Outside the car, a leaf blew across the lot and stuck to the windshield. “Who is she?”
At his silence, I twisted in my seat to face him. “Who is she?” I repeated, my voice growing stronger.
He paused, and I knew this face, this quiet look, his pupils minutely tick-tocking, his breathing quiet and calm. He was thinking, calculating, a dozen thought processes shifting and moving into place behind the scenes. I had seen this process a hundred times, and watching it, I realized my mistake.
I had shown one of my cards—chosen a question that alerted him to how little I knew. If I didn’t even know who she was, how could I know the extent of his deceit?
He swallowed against his tightly buttoned collar. “How did you find out?”
Shit. Could I lie? Could I backtrack and find higher, more confident ground? I searched for another path and failed. “It doesn’t matter,” I snapped. “I know about it all. Santa Barbara. Tuesday night. You aren’t as smart as you think you are.” I blew out an angry breath. “Why? What the fuck—wasn’t I enough?”
He shook his head. “Stop. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, Lill. It’s just sexual. A mistake. It didn’t mean anything.”
It’s just sexual. What a stupid and hurtful statement. I balled my hands into fists and hit the steering wheel so hard that my forearms vibrated in pain. “Who is she?” I repeated, my voice rising. “Someone younger? Hotter?” God, I bet she’s waxed. Probably cellulite-free, with no responsibilities and stupid enough to find his OCD tendencies cute.
“It’s no one you know,” he said quickly. “And she’s our age. Not hotter. She’s just different.” He didn’t say all the things a husband in trouble should say: No one is as hot as you. Lill, you’re beautiful. You’re perfect. Instead, he just sat on the statement, a period of silence at the end of the inadequate sentence.
“You’re a pig.” The words broke out of my chest with jagged edges, and to my horror, I started to cry.
“Lill . . .” He reached for my hand and I moved it away. He twisted in his seat, facing me. “I’ll stop it. Right now. Immediately. I promise.”
I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t making an excuse, that there wasn’t an explanation. In the book, they said that the cheater’s first instinct was to lie, to cover their tracks, but he was just rolling over and admitting to it all.
“Look.” He captured my hand and squeezed. “I’ll stop it. It’s done.”
“You should have stopped it on your own.” I yanked free. “I should have never found out about it.” Wouldn’t that have been better? Blissful ignorance. It was sad, but that was all I wanted. To have never noticed anything, to have a husband who had stayed attentive, stayed around, and conducted this fling without me ever growing the wiser. “You were sloppy, Mike. You’ve ignored me.” My anger grew and its focus on his careless cover-up didn’t make sense, but it was still there and raw and bubbling out around each word. “I loved you,” I spat. “I still love you.”
“Oh, Lill,” he said sadly, and his features broke in a way that I hadn’t seen since my miscarriage. “I’ll always love you. This was nothing, I promise. It was me being selfish. And it’s over. Please, please believe me when I tell you that it’s over. I’ll end it today. Right away.”
He cupped my face and stared into my eyes, and my heart sagged in relief and resignation because that was all I wanted to hear. “Jacob—” I said weakly.
“I’m your husband and his father, and I swear to you that I’ll do a better job of both,” he said firmly. “Okay?”
I nodded. What other option did I have? He was a husband and a father, and I was a wife and a mother, and the two roles were intertwined and my life had no other substance.
I flinched at the thought. Was it true? Without my marriage and my motherhood, I had nothing else? My job . . . There was that, however bleak last year’s demotion was. My Twitter account . . . God, I couldn’t look for purpose in a social media profile.
Was the bulk of my existence, my happiness, balancing on him?
I looked at him in horror and flinched as he smiled, his thumb smearing a falling tear across my cheekbone. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Look at me. I promise that I’m yours. All yours. I won’t fuck up again.”
I had to change this life. I had to find a better, braver, more independent me before he chewed this version into pieces.
CHAPTER 13
MIKE
I wasn’t lying to her. Sacrifices needed to be made, given whatever she’d discovered. She apparently hadn’t found much out, since she didn’t even know who I’d been with. But enough risk was already present. She knew about Santa Barbara and Tuesday night. Just those two puzzle pieces could unravel everything, if someone wanted to dig deeper.
Thankfully, my wife wasn’t a digger. She was a bare-minimum type, one who took the easy road, so I’d give that to her. A big, wide, beautiful road called Happy Married Life. I’d be the perfect husband. Loyal. Trustworthy. I’d grovel and court, and do all the things necessary to distract her from “the affair” and remind her of our love and family.
She didn’t have other options, so she’d fall back into place. There would be some bitchiness, some punishment, some frigid shoulders and sharp words, but Lillian was a creature of habit and comfort, and the alternative—a forty-year-old divorcée—was not a path she’d want to tread.
But yes, sacrifices would need to be made, which was why I returned to the office, picked up the phone, and made the call. I kept it brief and unemotional.
I ended it.
So there. That was done.
CHAPTER 14
LILLIAN
@themysteryofdeath: A scooter pulls out in front of a truck driver on a quiet island paradise, in sight of a Yorkie-walking teenage girl. Within seconds, the lives of all three will change. Who will die?