After Everything
Chapter 1 Emma
The best lies are the ones you tell yourself. Mine was that David worked late because he loved his job.
I was standing in our kitchen at eleven PM, staring at the plate I'd made for him three hours ago.
The chicken had congealed into something gray and depressing, the roasted vegetables shriveled at the edges.
My own plate sat in the sink, scraped clean an hour ago while I watched Netflix alone on the couch.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
Another hour, babe. Sorry. This case is killing me.
I'd been getting some version of that text every night for six months.
Maybe longer. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when a marriage starts to rot.
There's no clear expiration date, no warning label that says "best before infidelity.
" The changes come slowly, so gradually you don't notice until you're standing in your kitchen reheating pasta for one, telling yourself it's fine, he's just busy, this is temporary.
The ICU taught me to read monitors, to spot the subtle changes that mean someone's crashing before the alarms start screaming. A slight uptick in heart rate. Shallow breathing. The way a patient's eyes track the ceiling like they're already somewhere else.
I just never thought to apply those skills at home.
David had been distant for months. Not dramatically, not really.
There was nothing you could point to and say, "There, that's when it started.
" Just small things. The way he'd angle his phone away when I walked into a room.
How he'd started showering as soon as he got home instead of collapsing on the couch like he used to.
The fact that "working late" had become his default state rather than the exception.
But I was tired.
Twelve-hour shifts in the ICU don't leave much energy for suspicion. And David was on the verge of making partner at his firm, Olson, Chen they had been shaking the whole time, I realized. I'd just been too focused to notice.
My heart was racing. Pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes. The tunnel vision I'd had while documenting everything started to widen, letting the reality creep in at the edges.
David was cheating on me.
Not a one-time mistake. Not a drunken kiss at a work event.
A full-blown affair. Five months, at least. Maybe longer.
With Sarah, his beautiful, successful, daughter-of-a-founding-partner college friend.
In hotels. In her bed. While I worked twelve-hour shifts and came home to an empty house because he was too busy building his career (our future, he always said) to even have dinner with me.
I sat down at the kitchen island. The broken glass crunched under my feet.
The clock on the microwave said 11:47 PM.
David would be home soon. Another hour, he'd said. That meant midnight, maybe 12:30 if I was lucky. He'd walk through the door with his briefcase and his tired smile, kiss me on the forehead, ask about my shift. Like he always did. Like nothing was wrong.
I pulled out my phone and opened my email. The screenshots were all there, waiting. I had evidence. Proof. Everything I needed.
I thought about what came next. The conversation we'd have. The crying, the apologies, the excuses. Him telling me it meant nothing, that he loved me, that he'd end it. Me having to decide whether to believe him. Whether to try to fix this.
Whether I even wanted to.
Or maybe… maybe it wouldn’t be like that. Maybe he’d be happy he’d been caught. Maybe that’d give him the opportunity to leave and be with Sarah. Was he that kind of man? A coward?
I looked around our kitchen. At the plate I'd made him, now in the trash. The wine stain spreading across the floor. The broken glass I hadn't bothered to clean up. Eight years of my life in this house, with this man, building this future.
I'd given up med school for him. Moved across the country. Put my career on hold while he built his. And he'd repaid me by fucking his college friend in hotels I was helping pay for.
I stood up. Walked to our bedroom. Pulled his suitcase out of the closet and threw it on the bed.
Then I started packing his things.