Chapter 6
CONFRONTING THE MISTRESS BITCH
“I had another appointment today.”
I say it while he’s plating the salmon, because his hands are full and his back is half-turned and I want to watch his shoulders before his face has time to catch up.
There it is. A stiffness between his shoulder blades — barely visible, gone in a blink. He sets the plate down and turns to me, and by the time I see his face, the sympathy is already loaded.
“Yeah? How’d it go?”
“Same.” I pick up my wine. Swirl it. “Still nothing. But Dr. Martin brought something up. She thinks we should try IVF.”
Mark puts the food down and comes over to hug me. Squeezes. “I’m sorry, baby.”
I haven’t been to Dr. Martin. I haven’t been to any doctor. I’m testing him — dropping the word IVF into the conversation like a grenade with the pin still in, just to see what his face does.
“She says it might be our best shot.”
“If that’s what you want, we’ll do it.” His thumb traces my collarbone through my shirt. “Whatever it takes.”
Whatever it takes. I watch his eyes and there it is — behind the warmth, behind the performance, a flicker of something that moves too fast for sympathy.
IVF means doctors. Monitoring. Controlled doses of hormones that would show up on bloodwork, and bloodwork that would show the other hormones he’s been feeding me every morning for three years.
IVF is a threat to his entire operation, and he just smiled through it like a man who’s already figuring out how to stall.
I take a bite of salmon. Chew. Swallow. Wait.
“The thing is,” he says, setting his fork down, “IVF is a big step. I mean — the injections, the egg retrieval, all that. It’s hard on your body, baby. And emotionally? I’ve heard it’s brutal.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand. “I just want to make sure you’re ready. That we’re ready.”
There it is. The deflection dressed up as concern.
I just want to make sure you’re ready — the same move he’s been running for nine years, the tender stall, the loving delay.
Not no. Never no. Just not yet, baby. Not right now.
Let’s wait until the timing is better, and the timing is never better because the timing is a clock counting down to a payday, and every month I don’t get pregnant is another month he wins.
This piece of shit is trying to manage me.
“You’re right,” I say. “We should think about it.”
His shoulders drop a quarter-inch. Relief, dressed up as agreement.
“We’re coming up on ten years in February,” he says, reaching for the wine bottle. He pours himself more — generous, relaxed. “Can you believe that?”
“Ten years.” I let the words sit.
And there — his eyes brighten. Not with love. With something sharper and hungrier, like a man watching a clock tick toward midnight on a safe he’s been trying to crack.
“We should do something special. Big trip. Bora Bora, maybe. Or that place in Amalfi you’ve been talking about.”
“Amalfi would be amazing.”
“Ten years is a big deal.” He lifts his glass. “To us.”
I tap mine against his and drink and think: You’re not going to make it to ten years. You’re not going to make it to next month.
Later, in bed, he reaches for me. His hand slides over my hip, his mouth against my neck, and my skin crawls so violently I almost gag.
These hands. The ones that pop out a pill every morning.
The ones that tip the pill into the mortar and grind them to powder.
The ones that hold another woman’s children and then come home smelling like cedar cologne and touch me like I’m something he owns.
His fingers hook the waistband of my shorts and my stomach turns over.
“I’m tired,” I say. I roll away from him, pulling the sheet with me, putting my back to him like a wall.
A pause. His hand hovers on my waist, then withdraws.
“Okay.” Soft. Understanding. The devoted husband, giving his sad wife space. “Get some rest, baby.”
He settles on his side. Within minutes, his breathing deepens — slow and even, the sleep of a man with a clear conscience. Or no conscience at all.
I lie in the dark and stare at the ceiling and count his breaths and feel the disgust settle into my bones like silt.
The next morning. Six forty-seven. The blender. Forehead kiss. Drink up, baby. He goes for a run. I pour the smoothie down the drain. I’ve lost count of how many I’ve poured down the drain now.
Silence.
My phone buzzes. Gerald: Tomorrow. My office. 2pm. Paperwork’s done.
I type back: I’ll be there.
That night, Mark comes home late. Loosened tie. Cedar cologne. He drops his bag by the door and crosses the kitchen and kisses the top of my head.
“Love you,” he says.
Hate you, I think.
Shelter Island Shoreline Park, three blocks from the Harbor Drive condo, ten-fifteen on a Thursday morning — James told me she comes here Tuesdays and Thursdays with both kids, and I’ve been on this bench for forty-five minutes with an iced tea and a pulse I can feel in my jaw, watching the path from the parking lot, waiting.
She appears at ten-twelve. Stroller. Diaper bag. The toddler holding her hand — dark-haired, Mark’s jaw. She parks near the slide, lifts the boy onto the steps, and sits on the bench three feet from me.
“You have beautiful children,” I say.
She smiles. “Thank you. He’s a handful, but my baby girl’s easy. So far.”
“A boy and a girl. That’s the dream.”
“It is.” She’s relaxing now, the way women do at parks — easy, unguarded. “It’s exhausting, honestly. My partner travels a lot, so I’m solo most of the time.”
Partner. Not husband. Not boyfriend.
“They look just like their dad,” I say.
“Than—” She stops. The word dies on her lips. She turns to me slowly, her eyes narrowing.
“How would you know that?”
I take off my sunglasses. “Because I’ve been married to him for nine years.”
The color leaves her face all at once, like someone pulled a plug.
“You’re — oh my god. You’re—”
“Mark’s wife. Yes.”
Her mouth works. No sound. I watch her scramble for footing — the shock, the calculation — and I wait, because I have been waiting for this moment for four weeks.
“What do you want?” she says. Her voice has dropped. “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see you. The real you — not a name on a piece of paper.”
“Well, you’ve seen me.” She grabs the stroller handle like she’s going to stand. “I don’t have to talk to you.”
“No, you don’t. But you’re going to. Because this is the only conversation we’re ever going to have. So sit down.”
She hesitates, but her hand loosens on the stroller handle and she sits.
“How long have you known about me?” I ask.
Her chin lifts. Defiant. “From the beginning.”
“From the beginning.” I nod slowly. “So when he came home to me and rubbed my feet and told me he wanted a baby — you knew about that.”
“He doesn’t want a baby with you.”
The words hit like a slap. My nails dig into my thighs hard enough to bruise.
“He told me everything,” she says. She’s gaining confidence now, her voice getting louder, sharper. “He told me about the prenup. He told me he was waiting it out. He said you were—” She stops herself. Recalibrates. “He said it was a business arrangement.”
“A business arrangement.” I laugh, and it sounds wrong even to me — bright and jagged. “Is that what he calls nine years of marriage? Of sleeping in my bed and eating at my table and spending my family’s money on your rent?”
“It’s not your money. It’s joint—”
“It is my money. It has always been my money. And you know that, or you wouldn’t have your name on that prescription.”
Her face goes rigid.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know about that too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t.”
Silence. The boy shrieks from the top of the slide. A jogger passes on the path. The baby fusses in the stroller, little sounds building toward a cry.
“He loves me,” Danielle says. Quiet now. Hard. “Whatever you think this is — he loves me. He chose me. You were just the one he had to get through first.”
I want to claw her eyes out. I want to grab her by the hair and scream into her face until she understands what she helped do to me. My hands are shaking and my jaw is locked and I can feel the rage pressing against the inside of my skin like something trying to break out.
“Mama.”
The voice is tiny. Not the boy — the baby. The little girl in the stroller, seven months old, reaching up with both hands, fingers opening and closing. Mama.
Danielle glances down. Reflexive, automatic — a mother responding to her child.
And I look at that baby — really look at her — and she has dark hair and Mark’s chin and she’s reaching for her mother with fat little fists, and something inside me cracks so deep and so clean I feel it in my spine.
A daughter. A girl. The baby I wanted most in the world — the baby I dreamed about, named, whispered soon to in the dark while my body bled and cramped and failed me every month.
And here she is. Seven months old, perfect, alive, belonging to this whore, who helped my husband make sure I would never have what I’m looking at right now.
The crack widens. The fury floods in — not the calculated kind I’ve been wearing like armor, but the raw, ragged, teeth-bared kind that wants to scream and break things. Hotter than anything I’ve felt. Hotter than the kitchen. Hotter than the photos on Gerald’s conference table.
“You know he’s never loved you, right?” Danielle says. Low, vicious, leaning toward me like she’s delivering a killing blow. “He told me that from the start. You were never—”
“For the record,” I cut her off, and my voice comes out so flat and so cold it doesn’t sound like mine, “he’s not getting anything. Not a dollar. Not from me.” I look at her. “And neither are you.”
Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
“And sweetheart?” I stand. “He may have fooled me for nine years. If you think he’s not fooling you too, grow the fuck up.”
I put my sunglasses on, and walk away before she speaks again. I don’t look back. I don’t let myself look back, because if I turn around and see that baby one more time I will come apart right here on this path in front of God and the joggers and the mothers with their strollers.
I make it to the car. Close the door.
My hands are vibrating on the steering wheel — not shaking, vibrating, the adrenaline hitting in waves so violent my vision pulses at the edges. I grip the wheel until my knuckles go white and I hear a sound and it’s me — a raw, guttural sob that rips out of my chest like something torn loose.
I cry. Hard. The ugly kind — gasping, choking, mascara streaking down my face while I slam my palm against the steering wheel once, twice, three times until my hand stings.
Not because I’m sad. Because I’m so angry I can’t hold it inside my body anymore.
Because I don’t know how to deal with this level of fury and the overwhelming need to hurt someone.
Because that baby had Mark’s chin and she was reaching for her mother and I will never forgive him for that.
Not for the pills, not for the money, not for the lies — for that.
For the daughter he made with someone else while I named a ghost and blamed my own body for his crime.
I am going to burn Mark’s life down to the fucking ground.