3. Valentina
— ? —
Valentina
He doesn’t ask. I don’t offer.
“This is it,” he says, pulling up to the curb. “You need me to wait?”
“No. Thank you.”
I stand on the sidewalk and stare at my house.
Our house. The house I poured my savings into, the house where I imagined raising children, growing old, building a life.
The azaleas I planted last spring are blooming pink along the walkway.
The welcome mat I picked out - a silly thing with a cartoon dog that made Sebastian laugh - sits crooked by the front door.
Everything looks exactly the same as it did two days ago. Before.
I didn’t sleep last night. Maybe two hours, three at most, in a motel room that smelled like industrial cleaner and regret.
I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of what happened, tried to find the moment where everything went wrong, the crack in the foundation I should have seen.
Six months. He was cheating on me for six months, and I didn’t know. What kind of wife doesn’t know? What kind of fool spends three weeks planning a surprise anniversary trip while her husband is celebrating his relationship with another woman?
I take a breath. Then another. I’m here for my things. My clothes, my jewelry, the photo albums from my childhood, the box of letters my grandmother wrote me before she died. I’ll get what’s mine, and then I’ll figure out what comes next.
My hand shakes as I reach for the door handle. The key slides into the lock and stops.
It doesn’t turn.
I try again, jiggling the key, thinking maybe it’s stuck, maybe the humidity warped the mechanism. But no. The key doesn’t fit. The shape is wrong.
The lock has been changed.
For a moment I just stand there, frozen, my key pressed uselessly against a door that used to be mine. Then I hear it - voices inside. Laughter.
Something breaks loose in my chest.
I pound on the door with my fist. “Open up! Sebastian! Open this door!”
The laughter stops. Footsteps approach. The door swings open, and there she is.
Vicky.
She’s wearing a t-shirt. Just a t-shirt, her long legs bare, a coffee cup cradled in her manicured hands.
I recognize the shirt immediately - gray cotton, soft from a hundred washes, with a faded logo from some concert Sebastian went to in college.
I bought him that shirt. Slept in it on nights when he worked late and I missed him.
She looks like she just woke up. Her blonde hair is tousled, her face bare of makeup, and she has the audacity to look annoyed, like I’m a solicitor interrupting her morning.
“What the hell are you doing in my house?”
Vicky blinks at me, slow and unbothered. She takes a sip of her coffee before responding.
“Your house?” She tilts her head, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “As far as I know, this house is not under your name. Sebastian is the owner of this house.”
The words hit me like a slap. “No. I paid money for this house. My savings. This house is also mine.”
“Well, that’s not in the legal papers.” She shrugs, a delicate lift of her shoulders. “So technically, it’s not yours.”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
Movement behind her. Gloria appears in the hallway, wrapped in a silk robe I’ve never seen before, her silver hair perfectly styled even at this hour.
She walks toward the door with the casual grace of a woman in complete control, and when she reaches Vicky’s side, she places a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder in a gesture of solidarity.
“Oh dear,” Gloria says, and her voice drips with false sympathy.
“I’m sorry that you have to get divorced like this.
I swear I liked you at first. You did make it easy, though.
” She tilts her head, almost fond. “Three weeks planning your little surprise dinner. All I had to do was change the guest list. Sebastian didn’t even know you were coming.
Did you see his face?” She sighs, wistful.
“I thought it was kinder that way. Rip the bandage off all at once.”
I stare at her. This woman who taught me her family recipes. Who held my hand at my father’s funeral. Who told me, over and over, that I was the daughter she never had.
“Here,” Gloria continues, and she bends down to pick up a black garbage bag that was sitting just inside the door. “We have put your stuff in these black bags. This one is the last one. The rest are outside on the porch.”
I look past them. There, stacked against the railing like trash waiting for pickup, are half a dozen bulging garbage bags. My life. My belongings. Everything I own, shoved into plastic and thrown outside like refuse.
“My belongings?” My voice cracks. “What the hell? This is also my house. I live here.”
Gloria sighs, the sound of a patient mother dealing with a difficult child.
“Well dear, legally this house is not under your name. Even though you gave the money, the name is under Sebastian. Your name is nowhere in the papers.” She pauses, lets the words sink in.
“Remember, you guys got the house days before you signed the marriage papers.”
The memory surfaces, sharp and painful. We were so young.
Twenty-two years old and drunk on love, convinced we’d be together forever.
The house came first because we found it and fell in love with it and couldn’t bear to let it go.
Sebastian handled the paperwork because I was busy with work, because I trusted him, because it never occurred to me that I would need to protect myself from the man I was about to marry.
I was a fool. A stupid, naive, trusting fool.
“I just can’t believe you guys have done this to me.” The words come out broken, barely a whisper. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”
Vicky rolls her eyes. “Well, you didn’t treat your husband as he deserved. Right, baby?”
Sebastian appears.
He walks up behind the two women and slides his arm around Vicky’s waist with an ease that tells me this is not new, that he’s held her like this a hundred times before, that his body knows hers in ways I thought were reserved for me.
He doesn’t look at me. He’s looking at Vicky, a small smile on his face, like I’m not even here.
“Yes, that’s true,” Gloria chimes in, her voice taking on a lecturing tone.
“Vicky treats my son like a king. She just made him the best breakfast ever. She cooks for him all the time.” Her eyes meet mine, cold and dismissive.
“As much as I liked you at first, you didn’t even cook for your husband. Always working and doing other stuff.”
Working. She means working. The job I kept because Sebastian’s career was unstable, the income I provided while he pursued his dreams, the late nights I spent at the office so we could afford this house, this life, this future that was apparently never meant to include me.
“I just can’t believe any of this.” I’m shaking now, my whole body trembling with rage and grief and disbelief. “This has to be a joke.”
Sebastian finally looks at me. His eyes, the same brown eyes that used to look at me with love, are flat and empty.
“It’s not a joke, sweetheart.” The endearment is a knife. “I love Vicky. I was in love with you at first. But when I met Vicky, I knew she was actually the woman meant for me. I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you earlier, but-”
“You’re sorry?” The words explode out of me. “You’re sorry for this? What about our company, the money I gave you? Everything we built together?”
He has the audacity to look uncomfortable. “Well, the company is also in my name.”
Vicky laughs. The sound is bright and cruel, and something inside me snaps.
“What are you laughing at?” I step forward, my hands clenching into fists at my sides. “I don’t understand. Are you proud of this? Are you proud of destroying another woman? Are you proud of being the second woman?”
Vicky’s smile doesn’t waver. She meets my eyes with a look of pure contempt.
“I’ve never been the second woman, love.” She says the word like it’s a joke. “You were always the second one. He came to my bed first, while you were working every night. I didn’t break anything. Your relationship with your husband was broken and you never even bothered.”
“I guess she was too busy working,” Gloria adds, and the smugness in her voice is unbearable.
I don’t think. I just move.
My hand connects with Vicky’s face before I even realize what I’m doing. The crack of palm against cheek echoes through the morning air. Vicky stumbles backward with a cry, her coffee cup shattering on the floor, and Sebastian lunges forward, putting himself between us.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He’s shouting now, his face twisted with rage, but he’s not looking at me - he’s checking Vicky’s face, cradling her cheek in his hand, making sure she’s okay. “You need to leave. Now.”
“Leave?” I’m crying now, hot tears streaming down my face. “What about my stuff, my belongings? This was my house. You guys have stolen everything from me!”
“You slapped Vicky.” Sebastian’s voice is cold, colder than I’ve ever heard it. “If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police. We told you, your bags are on the porch.”
“This can’t be real.” It’s the only thing I can say. “This can’t be real.”
But it is. It’s real, and it’s happening, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
“Okay,” I say, and my voice sounds strange, distant, like it’s coming from somewhere far away. “But this is not going to end like this.”
Gloria picks up the last garbage bag and holds it out to me. I take it. What else can I do?
The door slams in my face.
I stand there for a long moment, staring at the wood grain, at the peephole that looks like an eye watching me, judging me. Then I turn and look at the pile of garbage bags that contains everything I have left in the world.
My phone. I need to call an Uber. I need to get out of here before I break down completely, before the neighbors see me crying on my own porch - Sebastian’s porch, I remind myself bitterly - surrounded by trash bags full of my former life.
I make the call. The car will be here in eight minutes.
I spend those eight minutes loading my belongings into a neat stack by the curb, trying not to think about what’s inside those bags, trying not to think about the wedding china my mother gave us or the quilt my grandmother made or the thousand small objects that used to make a house a home.
The Uber arrives. The driver helps me load the bags into the trunk and the backseat without comment, though I can see the questions in his eyes.
“Where to?” he asks.
I give him the name of the motel. Then I sit in the passenger seat, surrounded by black plastic bags, and watch my house - Sebastian’s house - disappear in the rearview mirror.