Chapter 1 My Husband’s Wife
MY HUSBAND’S WIFE
My husband’s wife is an unforgiving woman. It seems strange to talk about myself in third person like that, but it makes it easier for me to come to terms with what happened.
It’s been a whole year since I ran up that hill to the waterfall.
A whole year, and still nobody knows the truth.
What my husband did to me broke my heart and it changed me. Turned me into someone even more invisible than I was before. And more dangerous.
Marriage is a promise.
I think that promises are made to be kept, not broken, and I wish more people would try to remember that.
Maybe if people didn’t go around breaking their promises there would be fewer broken people in the world.
I was still so young when I married my husband, and I dedicated my life to taking care of his daughter.
I sacrificed any ambitions of my own, so that he could focus on his career, while I looked after her.
He wanted us to live in Hope Falls and I thought we would be happy here.
I made our new house feel like a real home, but he didn’t appreciate it, not really.
He didn’t love me at all, he just used me to look after his precious little girl, and then he thought he could replace me.
I was going to jump that day at the waterfall. I was so tired, and confused, and upset about everything that was happening I couldn’t think straight. I ran past Old Stu walking his dog, and I ran up that hill, and I was going to do it.
But then I saw her standing there.
With her long blond hair. The “artist.” Eden fucking Fox.
The slut who had seduced my husband.
I’ve heard what people in Hope Falls say about me.
Everyone thinks I’m just a plain Jane.
They think I’m a pushover; so did Eden, so I pushed her right over the edge of the cliff. I’m not stupid. I know Carter only married me because I was pregnant, but does that give other women the right to try to steal him from me?
I don’t think so.
I’ll never forget the utter humiliation and devastation I felt when I made Carter lunch one day and took it—along with our baby daughter—to surprise him at the police station.
It was me who was surprised in the end, when I peered through the window and saw the back of that blond slut’s head.
She was sitting on my husband’s desk with her back to me and her tongue down his throat.
Well, I took care of that bitch when I bumped into her at the waterfall.
She had the nerve to deny kissing him—came up with some crazy bullshit story that it was another woman pretending to be her.
I was so angry with her thinking I’m a fool I pushed her off the cliff.
Then there’s the other one, Olivia Bird.
I haven’t dealt with her yet. She resigned as Carter’s boss almost as soon as she started.
He says he doesn’t even speak to her anymore—he thinks I don’t know why—and we’re a happy family now.
Very happy. But I know that Carter is lying about something.
He often can’t sleep, as though he has a secret burden on his mind.
And I haven’t forgotten the night Carter came home at 4:00 AM stinking of sex and another woman’s perfume.
She had the audacity to show up on my doorstep the next day, looking for him, introducing herself as his new boss, wearing the same stink.
I played nice. I cooked them dinner. Then she lied to my face, in my home, and said they were joining the parade when really they snuck off to Spyglass together.
I wore my Day of the Dead costume and I went there and I found her, but she looked dead already.
Otherwise I would have killed her too.
I’m still watching her.
I still might.
Because I’m not just a plain Jane.
I am a mother. I am a wife.
And I will not let some other woman steal my husband or hurt my family.
People always think it’s the husband, but sometimes it’s the wife.