My Husband Cheated with Another Woman (Her Marriage in Crisis #70)

1. Audrey

— ? —

Audrey

The cottage smells like spaghetti and wood smoke, and for one stupid moment I let myself believe everything is fine.

Lily’s finally asleep after negotiating her way to three bedtime stories instead of two.

The dishes are done. The counters are wiped.

Through the ceiling, I can hear the old pipes groaning as Rowan showers - that familiar complaint of a house that’s seen sixty Maine winters and has opinions about all of them.

Our seafoam-green cottage. The one we fell in love with on our honeymoon drive through Miller’s Point, back when we were twenty-three and drunk on each other and convinced the whole world was ours for the taking.

Rowan had pulled over, pointed at the faded FOR SALE sign, and said, “That’s it.

That’s where we’re going to raise our kids. ”

We’d made an offer that afternoon. Insane. Reckless. Perfect.

Now I’m standing at the kitchen counter with a damp sponge in my hand, and his phone lights up three feet away from me, and I watch the preview scroll across the screen like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

Miss you. Can’t stop thinking about last night.

The contact name glows in the dim kitchen light: M ??

I stop breathing.

It’s nothing. It’s a wrong number. It’s some work thing I’m misunderstanding because I’m tired and paranoid and-

I pick up the phone.

I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. Every voice in my head is screaming to put it down, walk away, be the kind of woman who trusts her husband.

But my fingers are already moving, already unlocking the screen with the code I’ve known for years - Lily’s birthday, because of course, because he’s sentimental like that - and the message thread opens like a wound.

Three months.

The messages go back three months.

No explicit photos, no graphic sexting, nothing I could point to and say there, that’s the affair, that’s the betrayal in black and white. It’s worse than that. So much worse.

M ??: I love how you actually listen. Like really listen.

Rowan: You’re easy to listen to.

M ??: You’re the only one who really sees me.

I scroll faster, my thumb moving like it belongs to someone else, some woman I don’t recognize who’s standing in her kitchen reading her husband’s secrets.

Rowan: I feel more myself with you than I have in years.

The cold starts behind my ribs. Frost on glass. Spreading.

M ??: Wish I could have stayed longer.

Rowan: Next time.

Next time. Like there’s a standing appointment. Like she’s penciled into his calendar somewhere between Lily’s soccer practice and our mortgage payment.

I keep scrolling.

Rowan: Audrey doesn’t-

My thumb hovers over the screen. The message cuts off, or he deleted the rest, or I physically cannot make myself see what comes after my name and the word doesn’t.

Audrey doesn’t what? Doesn’t understand him? Doesn’t see him? Doesn’t make him feel like himself anymore?

The pipes upstairs go quiet. The shower’s off.

I put the phone down exactly where I found it - screen angled slightly toward the window, top right corner aligned with the edge of the placemat. I adjust it a millimeter to the left. My hands are steady. How are my hands steady?

The sponge is still in my grip, dripping onto the tile.

I start wiping the counter again, smooth circular motions, the same motion I’ve made ten thousand times in this kitchen.

The same granite where he used to kiss my neck while I cooked.

The same spot where we conceived Lily after too much champagne on New Year’s Eve, laughing and shushing each other because his mother was asleep in the guest room.

He’s been handing her pieces of himself. The pieces I’ve been starving for, reaching for in the dark, telling myself I was imagining the distance.

The bathroom door opens. His footsteps on the landing, then the stairs. That familiar creak on the third step from the bottom - the one he keeps promising to fix and never does.

“Hey.” Rowan appears in the kitchen doorway, towel around his waist, wet hair curling at his temples. He’s smiling that crooked smile, the one that made me spill coffee on myself the first time I saw it across a crowded lecture hall. “Lily go down okay?”

“Out like a light.” My voice sounds normal. I don’t know how my voice sounds normal. “She tried the water negotiation twice, but I held firm.”

“That’s my girl.” He crosses to me, bare feet on the cold tile, and drops a kiss on my hair. His hand lands on my shoulder, warm and familiar, and I feel nothing. “She’s going to be a hostage negotiator when she grows up. Or a mob lawyer. Maybe both.”

“She gets it from you.”

“Please. You’re the stubborn one.” He reaches past me for his phone, and I watch his hand close around it, watch him lift it like it weighs nothing, like it’s not a bomb he’s been carrying in his pocket for three months. “Dave’s been texting about the Henderson project. Guy never sleeps.”

I watch his face as he checks the screen.

There it is.

That tiny flicker of something soft around his eyes. That small smile he probably doesn’t even know he’s making, private and warm, the smile of a man who has something sweet waiting for him.

That softness used to be mine. I remember when that softness was mine.

“Everything okay?” I hear myself ask.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah, just work stuff. The usual chaos.” He sets the phone back down, and his hand lingers on it for half a second too long. “I’m going to throw on some sweats and answer a few emails. You coming up soon?”

“In a minute. I want to finish cleaning up.”

“Aud, it’s already clean. You’ve been wiping that same spot for five minutes.”

I look down. He’s right. The granite is practically gleaming.

“I like it clean,” I say.

“Okay, weirdo.” He grins, kisses my temple this time, and turns to leave. At the doorway he pauses, glancing back. “You sure you’re all right? You seem kind of... I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

Ask me. Push harder. Make me tell you what I found.

“Just tired,” I say. “Long day.”

“Get some sleep. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

The words come out automatically, muscle memory, the script of a marriage. He disappears into the living room, and I hear the creak of the couch, the soft tap of his fingers on a keyboard.

Or maybe on a phone screen. Texting her back. Miss you too. Can’t wait for next time.

I rinse the sponge. I hang it on the little hook by the sink - the hook he installed our first week in this house because I complained about sponges sitting in puddles. I turn off the kitchen light and stand in the darkness for a moment, staring out the window at the water.

The bay is silver under the moon. Peaceful. Indifferent.

Three months. For three months, he’s been building something with someone else while I’ve been right here. Cooking his dinners. Washing his clothes. Lying next to him in the dark wondering why he felt so far away.

Audrey doesn’t-

I climb the stairs alone. I close the bedroom door and sit on the edge of the bed where I’ve slept beside him for nine years, and I let my hands shake the way they’ve been wanting to since I saw that first message.

Miss you. Can’t stop thinking about last night.

What happened last night? He was home by six. We ate dinner together. We watched Lily catch fireflies in the backyard until dark. He gave her a bath while I did dishes. We sat on the couch and watched half a nature documentary before I fell asleep on his shoulder.

What happened last night that she’s still thinking about?

I hear him come up the stairs an hour later. The bedroom door opens, spilling hallway light across the floor.

“Aud? You still awake?”

I keep my breathing slow and even. I don’t answer.

He sighs, soft and tired, and slides into bed beside me. His hand finds my hip in the dark - a reflex, nothing more, the unconscious touch of a man who’s shared a bed so long he doesn’t think about it anymore.

“Night, Aud,” he whispers.

I lie perfectly still.

I count his breaths until they slow into sleep. Then I stare at the ceiling and wonder how long you can pretend not to know something before it eats you alive from the inside.