3. Selene #3
Claudette watches me with barely concealed satisfaction, and in this moment, I understand exactly what she’s doing.
This isn’t about creative ambition or professional achievement.
This is about me. About proving that she can take everything that made me superior, my career, my marriage, my creative partnership with Dylan, and claim it as her own.
She wanted this. She engineered this. And I walked right into it like a naive fool, carrying homemade chicken bowls while she consolidated her position at my husband’s side.
“I should go.” I take a step back, then another. “I don’t want to be in the way.”
“You’re not in the way.” Claudette’s voice follows me, sugared with false sympathy. “You’re just not really needed here, that’s all. Different thing.”
I stop walking.
For a moment, I consider turning around. Consider confronting her right here in front of the entire crew, telling her exactly what I think of her transparent manipulation, her calculated cruelty, her pathetic attempt to steal a life she was never capable of building herself.
The tote bag I handed to him catches my attention. It is now discarded under his chair.
But Dylan is watching the monitor again, completely absorbed in his work, and I realize that making a scene would only make me look unhinged. Claudette would play the innocent victim. Dylan would be embarrassed by his dramatic wife. The crew would whisper about it for weeks.
So I swallow the rage building in my throat, grab the bag, and keep walking.
“Selene, wait.”
Claudette’s voice stops me at the studio door. I turn, and she’s crossing toward me with that sympathetic expression that I know is pure performance.
“Listen.” She stops just close enough that our conversation won’t carry. “I know things have been hard for you lately. Dylan’s told me about how disconnected you’ve been feeling, how you’re struggling to find your place now that he’s so successful.”
Dylan told her that? Dylan has been discussing our marriage with my estranged stepsister?
“He cares about you,” Claudette continues, her voice warm with false concern. “We both do. But you have to understand that what we’re building here is important. It’s his legacy. And sometimes, the people who love us the most have to step back and let us shine.”
I stare at her, searching for any crack in the facade, any hint of the jealous, bitter woman I know lurks beneath the surface. But she’s good. She’s very good. If I didn’t know her better, I might actually believe she was being kind.
“I appreciate your concern.” I keep my voice flat. “But I think I know my own husband better than you do.”
“Do you?” Claudette tilts her head, studying me with an expression that looks almost like pity. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like he’s moved on to more interesting conversations. But what do I know?” She shrugs. “I’m just the one he spends all his time with.”
Before I can respond, she heaves a deep, theatrical sigh and turns back toward Dylan with a smile that’s all teeth.
“See? He’s completely occupied.” She gestures toward where my husband sits, utterly absorbed in his creative universe that no longer includes me. “You shouldn’t really be distracting him now.” Her smile turns saccharine. “Leave the heavy lifting to us professionals, all right?”
She pauses, and I see the knife coming before she throws it.
“Go back to cleaning your mansion, sis.”
The words hang in the air between us, final. Claudette holds my gaze for one more moment, savoring her victory, then turns and walks back to Dylan’s side like she belongs there.
Because in his world, she does.
I push through the studio door and walk toward the parking lot on unsteady legs, my knees threatening to buckle. The bag I brought is still clutched in my hands. Without breaking stride, I drop it into the nearest trash can.
The food is discarded now anyway. Everything feels ruined now.
I make it to my car before the tears start falling, and I sit in the driver’s seat with my hands shaking on the wheel, wondering how I became this woman.
This pathetic, diminished version of myself who brings homemade lunches to a husband who can’t be bothered to eat them and gets dismissed by a stepsister who wants to destroy her.
Through the windshield, I can see the studio building where Dylan is working. Where Claudette is whispering in his ear. Where they’re creating something together while I sit out here in the parking lot like a discarded prop.
Go back to cleaning your mansion.
The woman I used to be surfaces in my memory. The actress who commanded screens. The producer who shaped narratives. The creative force who stood beside Dylan as an equal.
The notebook in Dylan’s office. The script on his bedside table, covered in Claudette’s handwriting. All the ways I’ve shrunk myself to fit into a life he built without me.
Plenty of evidence has been there for years. I just refused to see it.
The tears dry on my cheeks as something harder takes their place.
Claudette thinks she’s won. Dylan doesn’t even realize there’s a battle being fought.
But I remember who I was before I became his wife. Before I became invisible.
And I’m starting to wonder if maybe it’s time to stop waiting for him to see me and start figuring out how to see myself again.