Chapter 4 Emma
Jess made me eat.
Not much, just toast and scrambled eggs that I barely tasted, but she stood there until I finished, watching me like I was a patient she couldn't leave unsupervised. Maybe that's exactly what I was.
"Now shower," she ordered, taking my empty plate. "You'll feel better."
I doubted that, but I went upstairs anyway.
The shower ran until the water went cold.
I stood under the spray long after I should have gotten out, letting it beat against my shoulders, my back, my face. As if hot water could wash away the last twenty-four hours. As if I could scrub off the feeling of David's hands on me, knowing where else they'd been.
When I finally turned off the faucet, the bathroom was thick with steam. I could barely see my reflection in the mirror. Maybe that was for the best.
I wrapped a towel around myself and stood in the middle of my bedroom. Our bedroom. Except it wasn't "ours" anymore, was it?
My eyes landed on the closet. David's side was half-empty now. I'd packed his suitcase with the essentials, but there were still things. Shoes he rarely wore. Old hoodies from college. Boxes on the top shelf that we'd never bothered to unpack after the move eight years ago.
I should throw it all out. Bag it up, leave it on the curb, let him figure out how to get it back.
But instead, I found myself pulling down one of those boxes.
It was taped shut, labeled in David's handwriting: College Stuff.
I sat on the edge of the bed and peeled back the tape.
Inside, a mess of nostalgia. His law school acceptance letter. A worn copy of Getting to Maybe with notes scribbled in the margins. His undergraduate diploma, never framed. A UVA Law hoodie, faded and pilled. And beneath it all, photo albums.
I pulled one out. The cover was dark blue, embossed with "Class of 2017" in gold letters.
I should have closed it. Should have put it back in the box, taped it shut, shoved it back in the closet where it belonged.
Instead, I opened it.
The first few pages were what you'd expect. David at orientation, looking younger than I remembered, his hair longer, his face not yet hardened by years of long hours and billable rates. David with his roommate. David at a football game, beer in hand, grinning at the camera.
Then I saw her.
Page five. A group photo at what looked like some law school mixer. Seven or eight people crowded together, red solo cups in hand, someone's arm thrown around someone else's shoulders. And there, right next to David, was Sarah.
She looked different. Younger, obviously—her hair was longer, falling past her shoulders in loose waves. She wore jeans and a simple black top, nothing like the polished, professional woman from the photos on David's phone. But it was unmistakably her. Same sharp cheekbones. Same smile.
David's arm was around her waist.
I stared at the photo. Told myself it meant nothing. People took pictures like that all the time. Arms around each other, smiling, close. It was just a party. Just friends.
But I kept turning pages.
Sarah appeared again and again. Sarah and David studying in the library, heads bent over the same textbook. Sarah and David at someone's birthday party. Sarah and David and a few others at a bar, all of them laughing at something off-camera.
In every photo, they were next to each other. Like magnets. Like it was natural.
I remembered David talking about her, back when we first started dating senior year of undergrad. He'd just finished his first year of law school, and I was still pre-med, drowning in organic chemistry and anatomy labs.
"Sarah's brilliant," he'd said one night, lying in my dorm room bed, my head on his chest. "Like, scary smart. She can read a case once and know it inside and out. We're always partnered up for mock trials because we can finish each other's sentences. It's like we share a brain."
I'd laughed. "Sounds like you two should be dating."
"Nah." He'd kissed the top of my head. "She's like a sister. Besides, I've got you."
Like a sister.
I looked at the photo again. His arm around her waist. Her hand on his chest. Both of them grinning like they'd just shared a private joke.
That didn't look like siblings.
The next page had a photo from what must have been graduation. Sarah in her cap and gown, David next to her, both holding their diplomas. Someone had written in silver sharpie at the bottom: The Dream Team - JD Class of 2017.
My throat tightened.
I flipped forward. More photos. A camping trip: Sarah roasting marshmallows, David setting up a tent. A formal event: Sarah in a black dress, elegant and poised, David in a suit looking at her like she'd hung the moon.
I stopped on that one.
The way he was looking at her. I knew that look. It was the same way he used to look at me.
Used to.
Past tense.
My hands were shaking. I kept flipping through the album, faster now, like I was looking for evidence that would prove me wrong.
That would show David and Sarah were just friends, just colleagues, just two people who happened to orbit each other for three years of law school and then went their separate ways.
But every photo told the same story.
Study sessions where they sat too close. Group dinners where they always ended up next to each other. A weekend trip to DC where Sarah was wearing David's jacket. On Halloween, she had dressed as a lawyer, him as a defendant, some stupid couples costume that everyone probably thought was hilarious.
I stopped on that one.
Couples costume.
The album ended with graduation weekend. The whole group at a bar, celebrating. Sarah and David in the center of the frame, arms around each other, her head tilted toward his shoulder, both of them glowing with that particular kind of joy that comes from surviving something hard together.
At the bottom, in that same silver sharpie: End of an era. Love you guys!
I closed the album.
The room was too quiet. I could hear my own breathing, shallow and fast. Could feel my pulse in my throat.
David had told me they were like siblings. That Sarah was just a friend. That I had nothing to worry about.
But he'd been lying. Maybe not about sleeping with her… that came later, when they "reconnected" for the case. But about what she meant to him. About what they'd been.
She wasn't just some random woman he'd cheated with. She was the woman he'd spent three years of his life with, studying with, laughing with, looking at like she was the most fascinating person in the world.
And I'd given up med school to follow him across the country, away from her, only for him to bring her right back into our lives the second he got the chance.
The rage hit me so suddenly I almost couldn't breathe.
I grabbed my phone from the nightstand.
My contacts list blurred as I scrolled. My hands were still shaking. I found the name I was looking for.
Rachel.
My older sister. The one who'd gone to law school while I'd been in nursing school. The one who'd made partner at her firm in Boston by the time she was thirty-five. The one who'd always been the practical one, the one who knew how to handle things, how to fix things.
The one who'd never liked David.
"He's charming," she'd said at our wedding, champagne in hand, watching him laugh with his groomsmen across the reception hall. "But I don't trust charming."
I'd brushed her off. Told her she was being overprotective. That David loved me, that we were building a life together, that everything would be fine.
God, I'd been so fucking stupid.
My fingers moved across the screen.
I need your help.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
What's wrong?
I stared at the question. How did you summarize the last twenty-four hours into a text message?
David's been having an affair. Five months. I kicked him out. I need a divorce lawyer.
The dots disappeared. Reappeared. Disappeared again.
Then my phone rang.
"Rachel," I answered, my voice cracking on her name.
"I'm going to kill him." Her voice was ice-cold. Lawyer voice. The voice that meant someone was about to get destroyed. "Tell me everything."