15. Christine
— ? —
Christine
It takes eight days to arrange. Eight days of follow-up appointments, of a pediatrician listening to Isabella’s chest and finally using the word clear, of me reading Pauline’s interview until I could recite it from memory. I don’t go anywhere near that woman until my daughter is well.
Then I go.
The café is pretentious in exactly the way Pauline would choose - exposed brick, artisanal everything, the kind of place where people come to be seen rather than to actually drink coffee.
She’s seated at a corner table with a woman I recognize from one of the morning shows, a recorder blinking red between them, and she’s wearing white again.
Always white. As if the color can make her clean.
I pause just inside the doorway, adjusting Isabella in the designer carrier strapped to my chest. My daughter chose this morning to be alert and curious, her dark eyes tracking the movement of people around us, her tiny fist clutching a strand of my hair like a lifeline.
Good. Let Pauline see what she tried to destroy.
The café goes quiet when I enter. Not completely - the espresso machine still hisses, someone coughs in the corner - but enough that I know I’ve been recognized.
Phones appear. Of course they do. Christine Morgan, disgraced wife, tabloid fodder, here in the flesh to confront the woman who’s been selling stories about her marriage.
Let them record. Let them photograph. Let the whole world see what happens when you push a mother too far.
I walk toward Pauline’s table.
Her face cycles through surprise, then confusion, then something that looks almost like fear before she smooths it into that practiced smile. The interviewer half-rises, uncertain, but Pauline waves her down.
“Christine.” She says my name like we’re old friends, like she hasn’t spent the past week painting me as a cold, neglectful shrew. “What a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
I pull out the empty chair across from her and sit down, shifting Isabella to make sure she’s comfortable. My daughter makes a small sound - not a cry, something softer, curious - and Pauline’s eyes flicker to her before returning to my face.
“We’re in the middle of an interview-”
“I know.” I fold my hands on the table, calm as ice. “I thought I’d contribute.”
The interviewer - a woman with sharp eyes and a sharper haircut - leans forward slightly. The recorder light blinks. Good.
“You intercepted my calls while I was in labor.”
The words land like stones in still water. Pauline’s smile falters.
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“Twelve hours.” I keep my voice steady, conversational even, as if we’re discussing the weather rather than the systematic destruction of my family.
“For twelve hours, while I was screaming in a hospital room, while I was pushing your boss’s daughter into the world alone, you sat on every message that came in.
And when I still wouldn’t stop calling, you had a message sent to me from his number telling me he was aware and I should rest. He was asleep. He didn’t know I was in labor.”
Pauline glances at the recorder, then at the interviewer, then back at me. I can see her calculating, trying to figure out how to spin this, how to maintain her narrative in the face of someone who actually knows the truth.
“I was protecting him from distractions during a critical negotiation-”
“You sent texts from his phone.” I reach into my bag and pull out the folder - the one I’ve been carrying like a weapon, the one containing every piece of evidence Benedict’s team compiled. “To yourself. To me. To anyone you thought might help your story.”
I spread the papers across the table, watching her face as she realizes what she’s looking at.
Phone records. Call logs. An assistant’s message thread. Corridor footage from the Budapest hotel, stamped 2:14 in the morning, showing her standing outside his door with his phone in her hand and choosing not to knock.
“You manipulated his schedule. You positioned yourself for years - years, Pauline - to destroy my marriage.” I lean forward, my voice dropping to something intimate, dangerous.
“And when that didn’t work fast enough, when he didn’t fall into your arms the way you planned, you tried to destroy me instead. ”
The café has gone silent now. Truly silent. Every eye in the room is fixed on our table, every phone pointed in our direction.
Pauline’s composure cracks.
“He was miserable with you-”
“He was stressed.” The words come out sharp, final. “He was working too hard and neglecting his family and making mistakes he’ll spend the rest of his life regretting. But he was never yours. He was never going to be yours. And you couldn’t stand it.”
Something ugly flashes across her face - the real Pauline, the one hiding behind the white dresses and the victim narrative. Jealousy. Rage. The frustrated fury of a woman who played a long game and lost.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. I was there for him when you weren’t. I understood his work, his pressure, his-”
“You understood how to manipulate an exhausted man into depending on you.” I shuffle through the papers, pull out a specific sheet.
“This is his assistant telling you I was in labor at ten past one in the morning. This is you writing back, eleven minutes later, promising to pass it on.” I pull the next one.
“This is you outside his door at 2:14 deciding not to wake him. This is the message that went out from his phone at three. And this” - the last sheet - “is his assistant telling you at ten to two that afternoon that I’d delivered and was asking whether he’d been told.
You posted the photograph nineteen minutes later. ”
“You wrote that message,” I say. “The three o’clock one. You stood outside his door, you decided not to wake him, and then you answered his wife for him.”
Something moves across her face. Not fear. Something worse, something almost proud, and for one second she forgets what the blinking red light on the table is for.
“I wrote what he would have written if he’d been awake to write it.” Her chin comes up. “That’s what I did for that man for two years. Every hour of every day. Nobody in his life ever once thanked me for it.”
“He was asleep. He didn’t know I was in labor.”
“He didn’t need to know at three in the morning.” She hears it a half-second too late. Her eyes go to the recorder, then to the interviewer, then to the phones held up around the room. “That isn’t what I-”
“It’s recorded,” the interviewer says, not unkindly.
I hold it up so the interviewer can see. So the phones can capture it. So the whole world can know.
“You let me believe my husband didn’t care enough to answer while I was hemorrhaging. You posted photos knowing exactly how they’d look. You built a story, brick by brick, designed to make me doubt everything I knew about my marriage.”
Pauline’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“I could destroy you with this.” I set the paper down, smooth it flat against the table.
“I could take this to every outlet that published your lies. I could sue you for defamation, for intentional infliction of emotional distress, for every sleepless night I’ve spent wondering if my husband was in bed with another woman. ”
She’s trembling now. Actually trembling. The interviewer is scribbling furiously, the recorder capturing every word.
“But I won’t.”
Pauline blinks. “What?”
“I won’t destroy you.” I lean back in my chair, Isabella stirring against my chest. “Because you’re not worth my energy. You’re not worth my time, my anger, my attention. You’re a footnote. A cautionary tale. The answer to a question no one will remember asking.”
I stand, gathering the papers, tucking them back into my bag.
“What I will do is correct the record. This interview is being recorded, and everything I just said is going to be public within the hour. Your own words. Your own reactions. Your own face when you realized I had proof. What your next employer makes of that is no longer my decision to make.”
I sling the bag over my shoulder, adjust Isabella’s carrier.
“You will never speak my name again. You will never contact my husband, my daughter, or anyone in my family. And if you ever - ever - come near any of us again, I will take every piece of evidence in this folder and I will make what the tabloids have done to you look like a love letter.”
Pauline stares at me. Her face is white. Her hands are shaking. She looks like a woman who’s just watched her entire world collapse.
Good.
I turn to the interviewer, who’s watching me with something that looks almost like admiration.
“You can publish that,” I say. “Word for word. I’ll even give you a quote: Christine Morgan has no comment on her marriage, her divorce, or the woman who tried to sabotage both. She’s too busy being a mother.”
I walk toward the door.
The café parts for me like water, phones still raised, whispers following in my wake. I don’t look back. Don’t acknowledge the stares, the murmurs, the flash of cameras.
I just walk.
Head high. Spine straight. My daughter against my chest and my husband’s name still on my finger, despite everything, despite all of it.
The door swings closed behind me.
Outside, the city roars on, oblivious. Cabs honk. People hurry past. The world keeps turning, unconcerned with the small drama of one woman’s confrontation in a pretentious café.
I find a bench a block away and sink onto it, my legs suddenly shaking.
It’s over.
Not the divorce, not the mess of my marriage, not the thousand complicated feelings I still have for a man who let me down in every way that mattered. But the lie about the affair isn’t hers to control anymore. Whatever she tries next, I won’t be facing it in silence.
I confronted the woman who tried to take everything from me, and I won.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I pull it out, expecting another news alert, another reporter requesting comment.
It’s from Benedict.
I saw the video. Someone recorded it. You were magnificent.
I stare at the screen for a long moment, watching the cursor blink. Isabella makes a small sound, and I look down at her - at her dark eyes and her father’s chin and the impossible smallness of her curled against my chest.
I type back before I can stop myself: Don’t get used to me defending you.
His response comes immediately: Too late. I’m already obsessed.
I laugh.
The sound surprises me - rusty, unpracticed, like something I forgot how to do. But it’s real. It’s mine.
And I realize, sitting on this bench with my daughter in my arms and my phone glowing with my husband’s words, that it’s the first time I’ve laughed in weeks.
***
Mom is waiting when I get home, her face a mixture of concern and curiosity.
“I saw the news alerts,” she says, taking Isabella from my arms. “Apparently you’re trending.”
“Apparently.”
“Are you okay?”
I think about the question. Really think about it, for the first time in months.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I think I might be getting there.”
She studies my face for a long moment, reading whatever she finds there with a mother’s intuition.
“He’s not completely forgiven, you know. One confrontation doesn’t erase everything.”
“I know.”
“But?”
“But I’m starting to think maybe I was wrong about some things.” I sink onto the couch, suddenly exhausted. “Not the big things. He still missed the birth. He still chose work over me for years. He still let another woman get between us, even if he didn’t realize it.”
“So what changed?”
I think about the hospital. About Benedict awake in a plastic chair at eleven in the morning with our daughter asleep on his chest, his hand covering her back, his eyes fixed on her monitor like looking away would stop it.
About the way he said I let myself be unreachable for an entire day once, while you needed me. I’m not doing that again.
“He showed up,” I say finally. “When Isabella was sick. He showed up in pajama pants in the middle of the night, and he didn’t leave until we did. He didn’t ask for credit, didn’t make a scene, didn’t try to force himself back into my life. He just… stayed.”
Mom is quiet for a long moment.
“That’s something,” she says finally. “Not everything. But something.”
“Yeah.” I close my eyes, let my head fall back against the cushion. “It’s something.”
My phone buzzes again.
Another text from Benedict: For what it’s worth, I’ve never been prouder of anyone than I was watching you today. You didn’t need me to defend you. You didn’t need anyone. But I hope someday you’ll let me stand beside you anyway.
I read it once and then I put the phone face-down on the cushion, because if I read it again I’ll answer it, and I’m not ready to answer it yet.
I close my eyes and let myself rest for the first time in weeks.
Something has shifted. I can feel it in the loosening of a knot I’ve been carrying since the delivery room. Not the end of anything. Maybe the beginning.
Maybe the beginning of finding my way back.