3. Emily
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Emily
Four days until the reunion, and I’m staring at Carmen’s name on my phone with my thumb hovering over it.
This is stupid, because we don’t call each other and we never have, not once in a whole lifetime of getting shoved into the same rooms by our mothers.
But I need something I can’t get out of Henry without tipping him off, so Carmen it is.
I hit call before I lose my nerve, and my heart’s going stupid-fast for a phone call I don’t even want to make.
Three rings, then four, and I’m about to give up when the line clicks.
“Hello?” Sharper than I remember, and wary.
“Hi, Carmen. It’s Emily.”
The pause goes on long enough that I check the screen to make sure she’s still there.
“Emily?” She says it like she’s holding the word away from her face. “Wow. What a surprise.”
“Yeah, I know, it’s been forever. I realized the other day that we hadn’t talked in ages and it felt weird, so I figured I’d just call. How have you been?”
“I’ve been good. Busy, you know how it is.” There’s a little warmth creeping into her voice now, the sound of her settling in, because if there’s one thing Carmen loves, it’s an audience. “Got a couple gigs lined up, some new people interested. Things are finally moving.”
“That’s great, really. I’m glad things are going well for you.”
“They are. They really are.” A beat, and then, because she can’t help herself, “And how are things with you? Still playing house?”
“Something like that.” I keep my voice easy and let it roll off me. “Hey, were you planning on going to the reunion? I just got the invite.”
“Oh, the reunion.” A pause, and when she comes back her tone’s gone a half-step careful.
“No, I don’t think so. I don’t really have the time for that kind of thing.
Shame, though, isn’t it? Homecoming queen sitting it out.
You’ll have to make sure nobody talks about me while I’m not there to defend myself. ”
So she already knows I’m going, which is strange, because I never told her. I let it sit a second, wondering where she heard it, then file it away for later.
“You could always come yourself, you know. It’s only a few days out, but there’s still time, and I could even get Henry to sort the details for you if you wanted.”
“No, no, it’s really fine.” The words come out a touch too fast, almost tripping. “I don’t even want to go that badly. You should go, though, you should definitely go. Reconnect with everyone. Catch up with all those people who used to look right past you in the hallways.”
And there it is, the first little jab, slipped in so smooth you’d almost miss the edge on it.
“I think I’ll manage.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will. You were always so good at managing, weren’t you? Managing to blend right into the wallpaper. Managing to be completely forgettable. Honestly, some things never do change.”
“And some people never grow up. Good talk, Carmen.”
I hang up before she can land another one, and my hands are shaking, which pisses me off more than anything she actually said.
I know exactly how she works, have known my whole life that her meanness comes from somewhere so hollow that one honest light would cave the whole thing in.
Knowing it doesn’t make the cuts bleed any less.
And she never said one word about the baby. Carmen, who tells everyone everything, who’d have a baby trending before she made it out of the hospital, had a whole phone call to mention it and didn’t.
She’s covering for something. I’d bet my life on it.
***
I need a car.
It comes to me at the sink that night, Henry parked on the couch with his phone, the TV down low. I can’t follow him without one, and we’ve only got the one between us. His, technically, even if I’m the one who drives it to the store and the dry cleaner and wherever else he needs things picked up.
I’ve got money, though. Cash I set aside back when I married him, tucked in an envelope at the back of my underwear drawer where he never looks. A few hundred bucks. Enough to rent something cheap for a couple days. Enough to find out if my husband’s got a whole second life across town.
I can’t park a rental in our driveway. He’d see it the second he pulled in, and then come the questions, and the questions never stop with Henry.
Mrs. Potts, then. Three houses down, an old widow with a porch she holds court from every evening, always sweet to me. The next morning, once Henry’s gone, I walk down and knock.
She opens the door in a flowered housecoat, and the smell of lavender drifts out around her. “Emily! What a nice surprise. Come in.”
Her place is small and cluttered, doilies everywhere, a cat I’ve never met giving me a look from the armchair. She makes tea I don’t want and I hold the cup just to have something for my hands.
“Mrs. Potts, I came to ask a favor. Kind of a weird one.”
“Of course, dear. Whatever you need.”
“I need to park a car out front this weekend. A rental. Not in my own driveway.”
Her eyebrows go up. “And why not your own driveway, sweetheart?”
I look down at my ring. “I think Henry’s cheating on me.”
It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and it just hangs there between us, ugly and real now that it’s in the room.
She doesn’t gasp or tell me I’ve got it wrong. Her face just goes soft and sad and squarely on my side. “Oh, honey.”
That undoes me. It all spills out, the text, the baby, the late nights, how he blew up when I floated calling Ciara. She lets me get through every word, and when I run out she reaches over and pats my hand.
“You park here long as you need. I won’t say a word to anybody.”
The relief stings behind my eyes. “Thank you.”
Before I leave I hand her my envelope of cash too, the whole worn stack of it, because if I’m going to do this, I want nothing important left in a house he can search.
“You be careful, though. A man like that, when he feels cornered, he can turn mean fast.”
“I know.”
“You got somewhere to go? If it comes to it?”
I haven’t let myself think that far. My mother’s, I guess, which is almost funny. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You come to me. I mean it.”
We talk a while longer about nothing, and when the sun starts dropping I head home through the backyards, the long way, so nobody clocks which direction I came from. Henry’s car is already in the driveway. I put on a smile and walk in the front door.
***
By Friday I’ve got a car and a plan and absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
Henry left for the restaurant two hours ago, and I’m parked across the street in the rental, a gray sedan so plain I keep losing it in the lot myself.
My hands won’t quit. I mess with the mirrors, check my phone, anything to keep my head off what I’m doing.
This is insane. I’m staking out my own husband like some sad PI in a movie. When the hell did this become my life? I push the heels of my hands into my eyes and make myself breathe, because losing it in a parking lot gets me nothing but caught.
His car’s in the usual spot. So I wait. The radio plays something soft and pointless and I turn it off, then turn it back on, because the quiet is worse. A woman walks a little dog past. A guy steps out for a smoke and goes back in. The minutes crawl.
3:15, the employee door opens. Henry comes out with his keys, scrolling his phone, in the blue shirt I ironed this morning. He looks normal. He looks like my husband.
He gets in and pulls out. I count to three, then go after him.
Three cars back. That’s the movie rule, right? I have no idea if it works. I don’t know a damn thing about any of this. The boldest thing I’ve done in years is buy name-brand cereal off sale.
He’s not heading home. I clock it when he hangs a left instead of a right, away from our streets, into a part of town I don’t know. Newer buildings, the kind young single people live in. He turns into a garage off a beige apartment block. I park across the street by a coffee shop and wait.
Twenty minutes. I count them on the dash.
Thirty. My leg won’t stop bouncing and I press my hand flat on my knee to kill it.
My mouth’s gone dry. I keep almost talking myself into leaving, telling myself this is nuts, he’s visiting a friend, I’m a paranoid wife who’s lost it, and then I make myself stay put because I drove all the way out here and I am not going home with nothing.
Forty-five, and the doubt’s louder now, maybe I really do have this all wrong.
An hour.
Then the front door opens and Henry’s there, and he’s not alone. Carmen’s beside him, red hair longer than I remember, a baby in a yellow blanket in her arms. He reaches over and touches the baby’s head, soft, careful.
Then he kisses her. Not her cheek. Not her forehead. Her mouth. Slow, sure, his hand at her waist like it’s been there a hundred times. He pulls back, says something, drops a kiss on the baby’s head, and turns for his car.
I can’t breathe. That’s a goodbye. He’s leaving. He’s getting in his car right now, which means he’s minutes behind me, and I have to go.
I drive too fast. Run a yellow that’s basically red.
My hands shake so bad I can barely hold the wheel.
My chest is too tight to pull a full breath, and I don’t have a name for what’s happening in there, and I don’t have time to feel it anyway.
Not now. I can fall apart later, in private, where it can’t cost me anything. Right now I just have to beat him home.
That baby is his.
The math finishes itself whether I want it to or not. Carmen goes quiet almost a year ago, just enough time. Henry losing it over Ciara, because Ciara might let something slip. Henry shoving me off to a reunion for a whole weekend. All of it, lining up.
A horn blares and I jerk back into my lane. Focus. Just get home.
I leave the rental at Mrs. Potts’s and cut through the backyards so nobody sees where I came from.
4:47. He was walking to his car when I pulled out, so he’s maybe ten minutes back.
I take the stairs two at a time, out of the jeans, into leggings, something that says I never left the house.
I splash cold water on my face till the red around my eyes calms down. Breathe.
5:03, the front door.
“Hey, babe.” A kiss on my cheek. I don’t flinch, and I’m proud of that.
“How was work?”
“Good. Busy.”
He grabs a beer and heads for the couch, same as always, like he didn’t just kiss another woman an hour ago, like there isn’t a baby across town with his face.
I stand at the stove and stare at vegetables I don’t remember pulling out.
My hands know what to do even when the rest of me has checked out, so I chop, I stir, I keep my back to him.
I can hear him laughing at something on his phone, easy as anything, and if I look at him right now I’m going to lose it.
He never wanted kids with me. Let’s wait, he always said.
Kids are messy, babe. The diapers, the noise.
I bought it. Thought we were the same page, waiting for the right time.
And the cruelest part is he couldn’t even stand Carmen at first. My mom begged him for weeks to give her that job and he only caved to shut Daphne up.
He disliked her. And then, somewhere, it turned into this.
At least we never had kids. I grab onto that like a railing. At least nothing chains me to him. At least when I leave, and I’m leaving, it’s clean.
The water boils over. I grab the pot and catch the edge of it, hiss out a curse.
“You okay in there?” he calls.
“Fine. Clumsy.”
I run my hand under the cold tap and watch the skin go pink. Reunion’s in two days. Three days away from this house, this man, this whole rotting marriage I kept smiling through. Three days to make a plan.
I’m getting a divorce. It doesn’t scare me, and it should. No job, no money, nowhere to land. But all I feel is clear, cold and clean, like I stepped out of a fog I didn’t know I was lost in.
He just doesn’t know it yet. I wipe my hand on a towel and go back to making dinner for a man I’ve already left.
I get through the meal, the dishes, the long hours of him on the couch like nothing in the world is wrong, until he finally heads up to bed and his breathing drops into that slow, easy rhythm of his.
Once he’s asleep, I lie there in the dark and stare at the ceiling.
He’s out cold beside me, slow and even, not a care in the world. I keep going back to that kiss outside the apartment, the baby in the yellow blanket, his hand at her waist.
How long has this been going on? A year?
Longer? Before the wedding, or after? Does Ciara know?
She’s been more of a mother to me than my own, and I can’t tell if she’s covering for her daughter or if they’ve got no idea the baby is Henry’s.
And under all of it, the one that won’t quit: did he ever love me, or was I just somewhere to keep the house warm while he waited on what he actually wanted?
The anger comes up hot and I shove it down. Not yet. I can’t afford to feel it yet. I have to be smart. Careful. Get through two more days without him reading a thing on my face.
Then I’m gone.
He never wanted children with me. That one keeps circling back, a cut that won’t close. All that talk about waiting, about timing, about not being ready, none of it was about us. He just didn’t want them with me.
I turn away from him and shut my eyes. Two more days, that’s all I have to give this. Two more days and then I never have to lie still next to him again.