21. Jenna
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jenna
Iran into Tessa Monroe entirely by accident, which mattered to me afterward more than I expected it to, because I could tell myself honestly, when I thought back on it, that I hadn't gone looking for her, hadn't engineered a confrontation, hadn't needed one the way some earlier version of myself might have.
It happened at a children's clothing store in the shopping center near Paige's house, of all places, six weeks after Sophie was born, both of us reaching for the same rack of newborn onesies at the same time before either of us registered who the other person was.
I'd thought about this hypothetical encounter more than once over the preceding weeks, running through half a dozen imagined versions of it late at night, some where I said something cutting and walked away feeling vindicated, some where I simply turned and left without a word, unwilling to grant her the dignity of a conversation at all.
None of those imagined versions had prepared me for how quiet and ordinary the actual moment turned out to feel, two tired women standing in a fluorescent-lit aisle of onesies, more alike in that instant, both of us just trying to get through an errand, than either of us probably wanted to admit.
I recognized her first, the sharp, put-together look I remembered from company events, though something in her had softened around the edges since I'd last seen her, a tiredness that hadn't been there before.
"Jenna." She said my name carefully, like she wasn't sure whether I'd want to acknowledge her at all. "I didn't expect to run into you here."
"I didn't expect to run into you either." I glanced at the onesies in her hand, small and patterned with cartoon foxes, and felt a strange, disorienting jolt at the coincidence of it, the same animal we'd chosen for Sophie's nursery. "Are you buying for someone?"
"My sister's expecting. I got roped into being the aunt who does the shopping.
" She set the onesies back on the rack, seeming to lose interest in the errand entirely now that she was standing in front of me.
"Can I say something? You don't have to respond, and I'll leave you alone the second you want me to. "
I nodded, curious despite myself, bracing for something I wasn't sure I was ready to hear.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For all of it. I kept telling myself nothing was wrong because nothing romantic was happening. That made it easy to ignore how often I called him, even after I knew you were uncomfortable. I leaned on him because he kept answering, and I should have backed off. I'm sorry."
I studied her for a moment, looking for performance in it and, mostly, not finding much.
"I appreciate you saying that. I do. But I need to be honest with you about something, since we're being honest. I was never worried you wanted him.
That was never the fear, not for one single day of this.
What I was afraid of, and what turned out to be true, was that he'd let your access to him grow so large that when an actual moment of competition arrived, he wouldn't even recognize it as a competition.
He'd just do what he'd trained himself to do. Help whoever was loudest."
Something flickered across her face, a kind of surprised understanding. "He said something similar to me. About the choice being on him, not about anything I did."
"It was on him. I want to be clear about that, and I think it's important that you hear it directly from me, not just from him.
You didn't force him to turn that car around.
You didn't engineer the timing, or make him choose you, or do anything malicious that I can point to.
You called someone you trusted during a real crisis.
Grant decided what to do with that call. Turning the car around was his choice."
"I know he ended things with me. The friendship, I mean.
Not just the work restructuring." Her voice had gone quieter, and I could hear, underneath it, something that sounded almost like grief.
"I resent it, if I'm honest. I never wanted anything romantic from him.
I just resent that he was the only person who made this whole year feel survivable, and now that's gone too, on top of everything else I lost this year. "
"I believe you didn't want anything romantic.
I never thought you did." I said it plainly, because it was true, and because I understood, standing in that store with a rack of newborn clothes between us, that there was no value in pretending otherwise just to feel more justified in my own hurt.
"But I want you to understand something, and I say this without any anger toward you specifically.
I wanted a husband who knew there shouldn't have been a contest. I told him that weeks before the gala, and he promised me there wouldn't be one.
Then the moment came and he turned around.
That is the part I have to decide whether I can live with, and it belongs between Grant and me. "
Tessa was quiet for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice had lost its earlier defensiveness entirely.
"He says no to me now. He didn't used to.
I'm still getting used to it. There was another situation, a few weeks back, my ex showed up at my building again, and he wouldn't come, wouldn't even really talk me through it the way he used to, just told me to call the front desk and the police and stayed on the phone until I did.
I was furious with him about it at the time.
I don't think I am anymore. I don't love that it happened at my expense, if I'm honest. But I think it's real.
Whatever you decide to do with your marriage, I don't think you're dealing with the same man. "
"I'm starting to believe that too," I said, and I found, saying it out loud to the one person who might have had every reason to want me to believe otherwise, that it steadied something in me rather than unsettling it. "How's the rest of it going? The divorce."
"Slower than I'd like. But better, actually, now that I'm not leaning on someone else to carry pieces of it for me.
I finally hired a proper mediator instead of just muddling through with Grant's advice between meetings.
Turns out that's a more sustainable way to get divorced than relying on your coworker's husband.
" She said it wryly, with the first real trace of her old, sharp humor since the conversation had started, and I found myself almost smiling despite everything.
"I hope it goes well from here."
"Thank you. I'm not asking you to be my friend, and I'm sure it's strange having this conversation with me at all. But thank you for saying that, and for being honest about the rest of it too."
"I hope it works out. Genuinely. Whatever version of working out that ends up meaning for you.
" She picked her onesies back up, offering a small, tired smile that had none of the polish I remembered from company events, just something plain and human underneath it.
"I'm going to go find something in a different pattern. Foxes feel a little loaded right now."
I almost laughed at that, surprising myself, and she left with a small nod, and I stood alone in the aisle for a minute afterward, feeling something settle in me that I hadn't expected a chance encounter at a children's clothing store to provide.
I hadn't gone looking for a confrontation.
I hadn't needed to threaten her, or demand anything from her, or extract some kind of victory from the exchange to feel like I'd defended my marriage properly.
I'd simply told her the truth, calmly, without competing with her for anything, because there had never actually been anything to compete for.
She lingered a moment longer before actually leaving, glancing back once as if weighing whether to say one more thing.
"For what it's worth, I don't think I'll ever fully understand why he answered every single call I made instead of setting a boundary sooner.
I've turned it over more than once, trying to figure out if I did something concrete to earn that kind of access.
I don't think I did, actually. I think he just kept saying yes, one small yes at a time, until neither of us noticed how big the yeses had gotten.
" She adjusted the bag on her shoulder. "Anyway.
I hope you two figure it out, whatever that ends up looking like. I mean that."
I finished my own shopping slowly after that, more onesies for Sophie, a soft blanket in a pattern that had nothing to do with foxes at all, and I found myself, standing at the register, thinking about how differently I might have handled this same encounter two months earlier, in the raw, immediate aftermath of the photograph, when the sight of Tessa Monroe across a store aisle would likely have sent me straight back out to the parking lot before I could trust myself to speak civilly to her at all.
I wasn't that person anymore, standing here now.
Something in me had settled enough, over the weeks, to let this be a plain, human exchange instead of a battle.
I drove back to Paige's with the strange, clarifying sense of having closed a door I hadn't fully realized was still standing open.
Whatever came next with Grant, whatever I ultimately decided about our marriage, it wasn't going to be decided by anything having to do with Tessa Monroe at all.
That part of the story, I understood now, walking out of that store with a bag of onesies I'd actually managed to buy despite everything, was already, entirely, finished.