Chapter 2
I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING
Preston comes through the garage door and hangs his keys on the counter hook and the first thing he does is walk over and kiss the top of Abby’s head.
“Hey, monkey. What are we building?”
“It’s a castle. For the queen goldfish. She needs a castle because she’s special.”
“Obviously.” He crouches next to her chair and examines the lopsided tower of blocks she’s constructed beside her plate. “You need a drawbridge. Every castle needs a drawbridge.”
“What’s a drawbridge?”
“It’s a bridge that goes up and down so the queen can decide who gets in.” He picks up a flat block and balances it between two towers. “Like that. See?”
Abby gasps like he just performed magic. “Daddy, that’s so good!”
He grins. That grin that crinkles the skin beside his eyes, the one I fell in love with across a table at a fundraiser when I was twenty-two and didn’t know what a prenup was. He ruffles Abby’s hair and straightens up and catches my eye.
“Smells good in here.”
“Lemon chicken.”
“Nice. I’m starving.” He loosens his tie and drapes it over the back of his chair and rolls his sleeves up and goes to the sink to wash his hands.
Normal. All of it normal. The way he flicks the water off his fingers, the way he grabs the dish towel without looking, the way he leans against the counter while I plate the food.
I watch him dry his hands and try to find it. The lie. Some crack in the surface, some flicker that tells me the man standing in my kitchen is the same man I watched on the nursery camera this afternoon. There has to be something—a hesitation, a tell, something in his eyes that gives it away.
There’s nothing.
He looks like my husband. He sounds like my husband. He built Abby a drawbridge and said dinner smells good and he is standing three feet from me and I cannot find a single trace of what he did today.
My chest aches. Not the sharp rage I felt this afternoon—something worse.
Devastation sits behind my ribs like a stone.
I keep looking at his face and searching for the stranger and all I find is Preston.
The Preston who drove me to the hospital when I was in labor with Abby.
The one who cried when he held her for the first time and said she’s so small, Soph, how is she so small.
The one who slow-danced with me in the kitchen on our fifth anniversary because the babysitter canceled and we couldn’t go out.
Where did that man go? Is he gone, or was he never real? Did I make him up? Did I build a whole marriage around a version of someone who only existed when it was convenient for him?
I set his plate down and sit across from him and he actually puts his phone in his pocket. He takes a bite.
“This is really good. Did you do something different?”
“More garlic.”
“It works.” He takes another bite and looks at me. Really looks at me. “You okay? You seem quiet.”
My throat tightens. Because this is the worst part—he’s asking.
He’s sitting here asking if I’m okay, and for one terrible second I want to believe he means it.
I want to believe that the man on the camera was a glitch, a nightmare, something I invented in a fugue state in the Target parking lot.
I want him to be the person he’s pretending to be right now.
“Just tired. Mitch was up early.”
“Yeah, he’s been rough lately. Probably the teeth.” He glances at Mitch in the high chair. “Hey, buddy. You giving Mom a hard time?”
Mitch bangs his spoon on the tray and babbles something.
Preston laughs and turns back to his plate.
He tells me about a meeting that went sideways, a client who keeps changing specs.
I nod. I ask follow-up questions. I watch his mouth move and I think about Ana’s mouth on his and the glider rocking and I swallow and cut Abby’s chicken into smaller pieces.
“Oh—did you call the pediatrician about Mitch’s rash?”
“I called. Hydrocortisone cream twice a day.”
“Good. Maybe put it on a list somewhere? I feel like stuff keeps falling through the cracks and Ana always asks me about it when I don’t have answers.”
He says it so easy. Like he’s being helpful. Like he and Ana are the responsible ones and I’m the variable they’re working around. I used to hear this and think he was right. I used to hear this and add it to the pile of evidence that I wasn’t quite keeping up.
“I’ll write it down,” I say.
“Thanks, babe.”
He calls me babe. He hasn’t called me that in weeks.
Who is this man?
The doorbell rings and Preston looks up from his laptop on the couch. “That Jess?”
“Yeah. We’re going to walk.”
“Cool. Go ahead, I’ve got the kids.” He says it like he’s doing me a favor. Like watching his own children for an hour is a gift he’s choosing to give.
Jess is on the front step in leggings and sneakers. She hugs me in the doorway, tight, her chin on my shoulder. “Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“Walk?”
“Yeah. Let’s go to the track at the high school a few blocks over.”
We head down the sidewalk. The sun is already low and the light is that soft amber that makes everything look warmer than it is.
Jess falls into step beside me, our sneakers scuffing the concrete almost in unison.
She doesn’t push. She asks me how Abby’s preschool is going and I tell her about the caterpillar Abby found yesterday, and Jess laughs, and for about thirty seconds it feels like any other evening.
Two friends walking in a nice neighborhood in nice light.
We pass the Millers’ house with the flag out front.
We pass the corner lot where somebody planted a row of crepe myrtles that shed so many petals in summer the sidewalk turns pink.
The air smells like cut grass and warm concrete.
A garage door opens somewhere behind us and a car backs out and rolls past.
“How are you doing?” Jess asks. Not the loaded version. Just checking in, the way she always does.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
She nods. We walk. She doesn’t try to fill the silence and I’m grateful for that. My body feels heavy and tight, like I’ve been holding my breath for a full day, which is basically true.
We turn left and the high school appears at the end of the block—brick and glass, the marquee sign out front advertising fall registration.
The track is behind the building, red rubber lanes around a turf field.
A boy in compression shorts is running hurdle drills on the back stretch, his coach standing near the curve with a clipboard.
Two girls are stretching by the bleachers, their gym bags piled on the bottom row.
The coach calls out something and the boy resets at his lane.
“I saw something yesterday,” I say. “On the nursery camera.”
Jess looks at me. I keep my eyes on the track ahead.
“Preston and Ana. In the nursery. Together.”
Her footsteps slow for a second, then pick back up. “Together how?”
“Together. Sex. On the nursing glider, three feet from Mitch’s crib, while Mitch was crying.
” My voice comes out flat. I’ve said these words so many times in my head that they’ve worn smooth, like stones.
“He moved the camera so it faced the wall. But it caught the mirror instead. I watched the whole thing on my phone in the Target parking lot.”
Jess doesn’t say anything. We round the first curve. The hurdle boy clears one, clips the next, stumbles, keeps going. His coach claps once. One of the girls by the bleachers pulls her hair up into a ponytail and starts doing high knees, her breathing sharp and fast.
“How long?” Jess finally asks. “Do you know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I don’t know how long or when it started or what else I’ve missed. I just know what I saw.”
We walk a few steps. The rubber track stretches out ahead of us, curving gently around the field. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets and fix my eyes on the white line of the lane marker because looking at Jess right now would crack me open.
“Are you going to fire her?”
The question hits me sideways. I hadn’t even gotten that far in my head. Fire Ana. The woman who watches my children every day, who knows their schedules, who Abby runs to when she skins her knee. The woman my husband is sleeping with in my baby’s room.
“I have to figure out what I’m doing first.” I blow out a breath. “I know I can’t let this slide. I know that. But I have to catch my breath before I do anything. Does that make sense?”
“It makes sense.”
“Because if I fire her tomorrow, Preston’s going to ask questions. And right now I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anything. I just have a video on my phone and a husband who doesn’t know I saw it.”
Jess nods. She doesn’t argue. She doesn’t tell me I should march home and throw Ana’s things on the lawn, even though I can see in her jaw that she wants to.
“He came home last night and kissed Abby’s head and told me dinner was good and I sat across from him and I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find anything wrong with him. He looked completely normal.”
“That’s how it works,” Jess says. Her voice is quiet. Not careful, exactly. Just steady. “They look normal because they don’t think they’re doing anything wrong. It’s not even hiding. It’s just compartments.”
We pass the bleachers. The second girl is still sitting on the bottom row scrolling her phone, one leg bouncing. The track is wide and mostly empty and the evening sky is turning from amber to pink and I can hear the distant hum of traffic on the main road beyond the school.
“What do I do?” I ask. It sounds pathetic out loud. Small and lost, like a kid asking directions. But that’s exactly what I am right now. I don’t know which way to go. I don’t know if there even is a right direction.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. Part of me wants to scream at him. Part of me wants to pretend I didn’t see it and go back to yesterday. Part of me just wants to take my kids and drive.”
Jess walks beside me for a while. Our shadows are long on the red rubber, stretching ahead of us into the far lane. The hurdle boy finishes his set and jogs to the bench where his coach hands him a water bottle. He tips his head back and drinks and wipes his mouth with the bottom of his shirt.
“I never told you about everything that happened with David,” Jess says.
I look at her. She’s watching the track ahead, her jaw set in that way she gets when she’s deciding how much to say.
“When I found out about his affair, I spent months doing what you’re doing. Sitting across from him. Watching his face. Going back and forth between wanting to leave and wanting to un-know it. And every day he acted so normal that I started thinking I was the crazy one.”
We come around the back stretch. The turf field is empty and darkening.
“You’re not crazy, Soph. You saw what you saw.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. Don’t let him be so normal that you start doubting your own eyes.”
My throat tightens. That is exactly what was happening last night at dinner. I was sitting there watching him build a drawbridge for Abby and not able to wrap my head around what I saw.
“The attorney I used,” Jess says. “During my divorce. Her name is Colleen Dyer. She was the best thing that happened to me through the whole nightmare.”
I feel my shoulders tense. Divorce attorney. The words hit different when they’re about your own marriage.
“I’m not saying you have to file. I’m not saying you have to decide anything right now.
But if you want to talk to someone who can explain what your options are—what you’re entitled to, how custody works, all of it—she’s the person to call.
She walked me through every step and she made sure I got what I was owed. ”
I don’t answer. We walk the back stretch in silence. The sky has gone from pink to a deep blue-purple and the first stars are showing up over the tree line beyond the school. The air has cooled enough that I can feel it on the damp skin at the back of my neck.
“Can you text me her number?”
“I’ll send it tonight.”