Chapter 3 #2
Cassandra laughs—high, giddy, the sound carrying across the grass even without the phone. “I really shouldn’t say anything.”
“Are you kidding me? You have to tell me!”
“Okay—don’t judge me.” Her voice drops, and I press the phone harder against my ear until the edge cuts into my cheekbone. “He’s... technically still married.”
Something rips in my chest. Not breaks—rips, raw and ragged, like tearing fabric. I’m gripping the bench so hard my arms are shaking. Technically still married. That’s me. That’s what I am to her. A technicality.
“But he’s leaving her. He’s promised.” Her voice is fierce through the speaker, bright with certainty. “We’ve been chasing each other for a long time, and I wasn’t ready before. I just—I wasn’t. But I am now. And he’s handling it.”
He’s handling it.
He kissed the top of my head yesterday morning.
He picked up my dry cleaning. He stood in our kitchen and showed me resort photos and said we deserve this.
And the whole time, Cassandra Merrill was walking around with his ring on her finger and the word leaving in her mouth like a promise already kept.
My eyes are burning. The sunglasses are fogging and I can’t blink fast enough and the tears are right there, right behind my lashes, hot and furious. I swallow them. They burn going down.
“That’s so exciting.” Paulette’s voice through the phone, so bright and steady that something in me wants to scream because I can’t be steady right now, I can’t be anything right now. “You really love him, right?”
“I do.” Clear. Sure. No hesitation, not even a breath before the words. “And...” Her voice drops lower. I stop breathing. “I think I might be pregnant. It’s early. Really early. But I think so.”
The park lurches. The bench, the grass, the bright sky—everything slides sideways and I bend forward, my elbows on my knees, the phone shaking against my ear. My stomach is heaving. Bile climbs my throat and I swallow it down, once, twice, my eyes squeezed shut behind the sunglasses.
Pregnant.
I asked him about kids. Year two, year three, year five. Every time—not yet, babe. There’s no rush. Let’s wait until things settle down at work. I stopped asking. I thought it was timing. I thought he meant later. He meant not with you.
My teeth are grinding so hard my jaw pops. Something is happening inside me—something hot and black, flooding up from my stomach into my chest, filling my throat, pressing behind my eyes. Not grief. Grief is soft. This is sharp. This has edges. This wants to break something.
Through the phone, Paulette keeps going. “You’re so fun. We need to go to dinner sometime! But first—selfie! Show off that ring!”
I force my eyes open. On the grass, fifty yards away, Cassandra raises her left hand. The diamond blazes in the morning light. Paulette leans in, angles the phone. I watch the shutter click. I watch Cassandra beam.
They hug. Cassandra gathers her mat, waves goodbye, walks toward the parking lot. I track her across the grass—the blonde braid swinging, the left hand catching sunlight—until she disappears past the tree line.
Paulette crosses the lawn toward me. Her pace picks up the closer she gets, and by the time she reaches the bench she’s almost jogging. She drops down beside me and puts her phone between us. The selfie fills the screen: Cassandra, glowing, ring raised, eyes crinkled with joy.
I stare at it. My hands are trembling in my lap. My jaw won’t unclench.
“She’s pregnant.” My voice comes out flat. Scraped. “He bought her a ring. He told her he’s leaving me.”
“Rachelle.” Paulette’s hand lands on my knee. “How are things between you two? You haven’t said things are bad.”
The laugh that comes out of me is ugly. Short, sharp, cracked down the middle.
“They haven’t been bad. That’s the thing.
There’s been some distance—he’s been working late, traveling more, but he’s the CEO.
I thought it was normal.” I press my knuckles against my mouth, hard, and my voice shakes.
“I had no idea he was having an affair. I didn’t even think he’d have time for one. ”
The words hang in the air between us. A woman jogs past the bench. A little kid shrieks near the pond. Saturday keeps happening around us like nothing is wrong.
“He’s been planning this, Paulette. Not just sleeping with her—planning. The ring. The baby. Telling her he’s leaving me. He has a whole life over there and I’ve been ironing his shirts.”
Paulette picks up her phone. Replays the recording—Cassandra’s voice, tinny and bright: He’s leaving her. He’s promised. She stops it. Looks at me.
“We need to find out more.”
“More?”
“We have a name. We have a face and a selfie and a recording. But we don’t have the bylaw.
We don’t have proof of how long this has been going on.
We don’t have anything he can’t deny.” She leans forward, elbows on her knees, mirroring me.
“If you’re going to blow this up—and you should blow this up—you can’t do it with a drunk VP and a yoga confession.
You need the kind of proof that doesn’t leave him anywhere to hide. ”
I look at the selfie one more time. Cassandra Merrill, radiant, diamond sparkling, mouth open in a laugh. The face of a woman who has been promised my life.
My hands stop trembling. Something settles in my chest—not calm, not peace. Something colder. Something that’s done crying on park benches.
“She thinks she won,” I say.
Paulette’s jaw tightens. Her eyes go hard. “She hasn’t met you yet.”