My Best Friend’s Texts to My Husband (Her Marriage in Crisis #89)

Prologue

Nora

Then - Two Years Ago

The cake has pink frosting and four candles, and my daughter’s face is covered in both.

“Mommy, look!” Lily holds up her hands, fingers splayed wide, buttercream dripping down her wrists. “I’m a princess monster!”

“The scariest princess monster I’ve ever seen,” I tell her, and she shrieks with laughter, running off toward the bounce house where her friends are already screaming at frequencies only dogs should hear.

The garden looks like a fever dream exploded across our lawn: pink streamers tangled in the rose bushes, balloon animals listing drunkenly against the fence, a small army of four-year-olds hopped up on sugar and the particular chaos of late afternoon sunshine.

My mother would have had a stroke. I love every second of it.

I’m carrying an armful of dirty plates toward the kitchen when Adrian catches my wrist.

“Hey.” His fingers are warm, familiar, and he tugs me to a stop in the middle of the walkway. “Come here for a second.”

“I’m literally holding-”

“The plates can wait.”

He takes them from me, sets them on the garden wall without looking, and pulls me closer.

His thumb finds the inside of my forearm, pushing my sleeve up until the birthmark shows, that strange little archipelago of darker skin I’ve had since birth.

He presses his mouth to it, the way he has a thousand times since our first date, when I reached for the salt and he noticed it.

“Nothing is ever going to happen to you,” he says against my skin. “Not while I’m breathing.”

My heart does that thing it always does when he says things like this. That flutter that makes me feel like the protagonist of my own love story, like I somehow won the lottery of life by landing this man, this house, this garden full of shrieking children.

But his eyes drift over my shoulder while he says it.

I don’t turn around. Not right away. I file it the way you file things you don’t want to know yet, somewhere in the back of your mind where suspicion goes to rot in the dark.

Later, though. Later I follow his gaze.

Brielle is standing by the roses, head thrown back, laughing at something my husband’s business partner just said. She’s wearing a sundress that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget, and she looks like she belongs in this garden more than I do. More than I ever have.

She’s my party planner. She’s my friend. She helped me pick out the pink streamers and argued with me about whether ponies were “overdone” for a four-year-old’s birthday.

And my husband is watching her like she’s the only color in a black-and-white photograph.

I don’t say anything. I pick up the plates. I go inside. I help our daughter blow out her candles and I smile for photos and I pretend I didn’t see what I saw.

That night, after the guests leave and Lily is sugar-crashed into sleep and the caterers have packed up and gone home, I find Adrian’s phone on the kitchen counter.

He’s in the shower. He never takes his phone into the shower.

I know the passcode. I’ve always known the passcode. He told me on our third date, the same night he told me his middle name and his greatest fear and the way his father used to hit him when his grades weren’t perfect. I’ve never used it.

My thumb moves before my brain catches up.

The messages load slowly. Or maybe that’s just how it feels when your world is ending, like time has gone thick and syrupy, like you’re moving through water.

Adrian: I can’t stop thinking about last night.

Brielle: Neither can I. When can I see you again?

Adrian: She’s suspicious. We need to be careful.

Brielle: I don’t care anymore. I don’t care about being careful anymore.

Adrian: I love you. I’ve loved you since the day you walked into our garden with fabric swatches and took over my life.

Brielle: Then stop making me wait. Stop making us both pretend.

Adrian: Soon. I promise. Just let me figure out how to tell her.

Brielle: You’ve been saying that for months.

Adrian: I know. I know. But Lily-

Brielle: Lily will adjust. Children always do. It’s Nora who won’t.

Adrian: That’s what I’m afraid of.

The sound that comes out of me isn’t quite human. Something between a gasp and a sob, caught in my throat like a fish hook.

“Nora?”

Brielle’s voice. She’s still here. Of course she’s still here. She stayed to help clean up, the way a good friend would, the way a woman sleeping with your husband would to keep up appearances.

“Nora, what’s wrong?”

She’s standing in the doorway with a wine glass in her hand, still wearing that sundress, still looking like she belongs here. And suddenly I understand that she thinks she does. That they both think she does.

“You’re in my house.” The words come out strange and strangled. “You’re in my house, and you’re - with my-”

“Oh god.” The wine glass doesn’t drop, but her face does something complicated. Fear. Guilt. And underneath it, something that almost looks like relief. “Oh god, Nora, listen to me-”

“You were in my kitchen four hours ago.” My voice goes flat. “You picked streamers for her party. You argued with me about the ponies.”

“It’s not-”

“So don’t you dare tell me it just started.”

“Six months.” Adrian’s voice, from the hallway. He’s standing there in a towel, water still dripping down his chest, and he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at her. “Nora, just let me explain-”

“Six months.” I’m laughing, and the sound is horrible, jagged and wrong. “Six months. Our daughter’s entire fourth year of life. Every holiday. Every dinner. Every time you said you were working late-”

“It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“That’s not - that’s not a thing people say when they mean it.” I’m backing toward the door, keys already in my hand. When did I grab my keys? “That’s what people say when they want to keep doing it.”

“Nora, please.” He’s moving toward me now, reaching. “Please, let’s just talk about this. We can fix this. We can-”

“Don’t touch me.”

I’m out the door before he can. The rain hits me like a wall. I didn’t even know it was raining, but it is, hard and cold and relentless.

My car is in the driveway. My keys are in my hand. The road is dark and wet and I shouldn’t be driving, I know I shouldn’t be driving, but I can’t stay here. I can’t stay in that house with those people who have been lying to my face while eating at my table and playing with my daughter and-

The bridge comes too fast.

Or I come to it too fast, my vision blurred with tears and rain and the horrible spinning vertigo of a life coming apart at the seams.

The guardrail doesn’t hold.

The river is black and cold and everywhere, and I’m upside down or maybe sideways, and the water is pouring in through the broken window, and I can’t find the seatbelt release, and my head is bleeding, and I’m going to die.

I’m going to die in this river because my husband couldn’t keep his hands off my friend, and my daughter is going to grow up without a mother, and-

A flashlight.

Sweeping across the bank, catching the chrome of my car where it sinks into the current.

Someone is there. Someone saw me go in. Help is coming, help is coming, help is

Perfume.

Drifting through the shattered window, impossible and unmistakable. I bought it for her last Christmas.

Brielle.

And his voice, thin through the rain and the water in my ears, saying my name. Once.

Just once.

Headlights swing across the trees, turn, and slide away into the dark.

Then nothing.