Chapter 3
I read the note for so long that the letters began to blur before my eyes, as if the ink were not ink at all but live black ants crawling under my skin, into my mouth, down my throat, into the very center of my heart, while I stood in the middle of our bedroom in my underwear, with red marks from the shapewear across my stomach and the scent of a stranger in my hands.
I read it once. Twice. Three times. And with each reading, the room held less air, and I held less blood.
Red. Commander. In front of the children.
She came downstairs. These were not just words.
They were small keys, fitted into the locks of my last excuses.
I could explain the text message as work.
I could explain the light hair on his jacket as the office, the car as a client, the late-night calls as security, his coldness as exhaustion, Lara's concern as awkwardness, my own pain as weakness.
But this letter lay in my palm and smelled of women's perfume.
Not mine. Not my mother's. Not accidental.
That same sweet scent I'd caught in his car and immediately buried inside myself, like evidence too terrifying to find.
I didn't think of Lara right away. No. Even now, my brain refused to connect the red dress with my sister.
That would be too filthy, too low, too impossible.
People don't do that to family. You don't sit at someone's table like that, adjust her bracelet, kiss her children on the head, say "I'm just looking out for you," while holding a knife behind your back with both hands.
I clung to that impossibility as if it could save me.
There were plenty of red dresses. Plenty of women.
Damien had many clients, partners, acquaintances, closed-off stories I wasn't supposed to stick my nose into.
I could almost hear his voice: "You saw words and invented a meaning.
" God, I was already defending him inside my own head before I'd even thought to ask.
The bedroom door opened.
I flinched so sharply the paper crinkled in my fingers.
Damien walked in without his jacket. His shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves rolled up, his face carrying that exhausted hardness he brought home after late-night calls and other people's troubles.
He stopped on the threshold. His gaze slid over me—over my bare shoulders, over the marks on my skin, over the paper in my hand.
No panic. No surprise. At first, not even anger.
Only a short, nearly imperceptible pause of a man who had seen that a situation had slipped out of his control and was already choosing which move would bring it back.
"Put it down," he said.
Not "what is that." Not "where did you find it." He knew.
That knowledge hit me harder than the letter itself.
"Who is she?"
My voice broke. Not beautifully, not dramatically—pathetically, hoarsely, rawly. Damien closed the door behind him.
"Niki."
"Who is she?"
"You went through my jacket?"
I laughed. Quietly. Crookedly. The laugh scraped my throat.
"Yes. Of course. That's what matters right now. Not the note from a woman who's inviting you to her place after your son's birthday. Not 'I'll be wearing the red one.' Not the fact that she knows how you spoke to me tonight. What matters is that I went through your jacket."
"You always pick the most convenient angle for a meltdown."
"A meltdown?"
"Yes. Because if you call it betrayal, you'd have to prove it. But if you call it a meltdown, you can just cry."
He took a step toward me, and for the first time all evening I did not step back. Not because I'd grown brave. Because inside me, there was nowhere left to retreat. Every inch was already occupied by fear.
"Prove to me it's not betrayal," I said.
Damien stopped.
"Don't speak to me like a prosecutor."
"Then what tone should I use? A wife's? A convenient one? A grateful one? Should I also ask whether to iron your shirt before you drive to her?"
Something dark flickered in his eyes. Fast. Dangerous.
"Shut your mouth, Niki."
I swayed. He rarely spoke that bluntly. Usually his cruelty was fine, like a surgical instrument, but this was already crude, almost brutish, almost a fist on the table.
And for some reason, it was precisely this that made me angry.
Not scared. Angry. As if someone small and beaten inside me, someone who'd been sitting with her knees drawn up for eight years, suddenly lifted her head.
"No."
Damien looked at me as if I'd spoken a word in a foreign language.
"What?"
"No, I will not shut my mouth. Not tonight."
"The children are asleep."
"Exactly. The children are asleep. Your son asked today whether you'd stay home, because at six years old he already knows: when Mommy's hurting, Daddy leaves.
Your daughter can only fall asleep after three 'I'm right heres,' but you didn't say a single word to me all evening that didn't make me want to disappear.
And now I'm standing here with a piece of paper from your pocket where some woman writes 'come over,' and you're telling me to shut my mouth? "
He was silent. Too calmly. Too long.
"Give it to me," he said at last.
"No."
"Niki, don't test me."
"And were you testing me? When you said the dress was too small? When you whispered in front of everyone that I was sabotaging myself? When you said not to confuse my insecurities with motherhood? Were you testing how much I could take, Damien? Congratulations. I took it. Now answer."
He moved quickly. Not sharply—no, Damien even now moved with control, with precision—but the next instant his fingers closed around my wrist. Not hard enough to bruise. Hard enough for the paper to tremble.
"Let go."
"Give it back."
"First tell me who she is."
"A person I'm helping."
"In a red dress?"
"You don't understand the context."
"Then explain it. I'm the stupid, emotionally neglected wife who needs to wear her bracelet higher. Explain it slowly."
He narrowed his eyes. I saw how the line about the bracelet landed, and for a second I was afraid I'd said too much. Not because I suspected Lara. No. Because in our house you could never show where it hurt—they'd put a heel there immediately.
"Don't drag Lara into this," he said.
Everything inside me went cold.
"I didn't drag her in."
A pause.
Tiny. Insignificant. The kind an ordinary person wouldn't have heard anything in. But I heard it. And he knew I'd heard it.
"You just brought her up yourself. All evening I've been listening to you two compete over neuroses."
"We?"
"Yes. You latch onto every word she says, and then you look at me as if I'm supposed to punish everyone who doesn't know how to pet you the right way."
"She's my sister."
"Then act like she's your sister, not a rival you need to defeat in your own kitchen."
I jerked my hand free. The paper stayed with me. My wrist burned from his fingers, and that pain was almost pleasant: real, comprehensible, honest. Unlike his words.
"Are you serious right now?" I asked. "I'm the one at fault for finding a love letter?"
"I didn't say you're at fault."
"No. You just led me there so I'd say it myself."
"Because you know how to make yourself the victim even where no one attacked."
"And what's this?" I held up the letter. "A goodnight wish from a client?"
"Yes, it's a client. She's in a difficult situation. She's emotional. She writes things she shouldn't."
"She knows how you looked at the woman in red."
"She could have seen it on camera."
"What camera?"
He went silent.
And right there, for the first time, I was truly nauseated.
Not even from jealousy. From how fast he was building his moves.
Word by word, stone by stone, a tower of lies or truth—it didn't matter—so tall that from below I could never see the top.
He was a strategist. Always. Even at home.
Especially at home. I'd come to him in pain, and he'd spread a map on the table, rearrange the flags, cut off my routes of retreat, and within ten minutes I no longer understood why I'd come.
"What camera, Damien?"
"The house has cameras."
"In the bedroom too?"
He looked at me, and my insides clenched into a single icy knot.
"Don't be ridiculous."
"After tonight, I don't know what's ridiculous anymore."
"Ridiculous is standing in front of me half-naked, shaking with jealousy, and drawing conclusions from a note written by a person you don't know."
I looked down at myself. At the underwear.
At the red lines from the shapewear. At the stomach I'd been trying to hide even from my husband.
Shame struck instantly, hotly, familiarly.
I grabbed the robe from the armchair and wrapped it around myself.
And immediately hated myself for the gesture.
He'd won again. Without even touching me, he'd made me cover up.
"There you go," he said quietly.
I raised my eyes.
"What?"
"You make yourself small. And then you hate me for seeing it."
I wanted to hurl something heavy at him. A glass. A lamp. My heart, finally—let him choke on it. But I stood in a robe, with the letter in my hand and trembling in my knees.
"Are you going to her?"
"No."
"Because I found the note?"
"Because there's nowhere to go."
"She writes 'come over.'"
"People write a lot of things."
"And you?"
"What about me?"
"What do you write to her?"
His face hardened.
"My phone is locked with a passcode not because I'm hiding mistresses, Niki. But because in my line of work, other people's lives are worth more than your desire to dig through my messages."
"Don't you dare."
"What?"
"Don't you dare make me the fool just because you have a good cover story."
He smirked. Not happily. Almost approvingly.
"Now that's more interesting."
"What is?"
"Anger suits you better than self-pity."