Chapter 1
The woman who opened my husband’s front door was wearing the sweatpants I had bought him for Christmas.
They hung loose around her hips.
For one second, that was all I could see.
Then I noticed the bare feet. The nervous hand gripping the dark door. The living room behind her, furnished with pieces I had spent three weekends choosing.
“Why are you in my husband’s house?”
My voice came out sharper than I expected.
She froze.
I stood inches from her on the clean porch, afternoon sunlight warming my back while something cold moved through my chest.
My handbag was still hooked over my elbow. My car was still running at the curb.
I had come to surprise my husband with lunch.
Instead, a stranger was standing inside the house he had told me was an unfinished investment property.
“I think you should leave,” she said.
“I think you should answer.”
Her eyes moved over my denim jumpsuit, my gold hoops, my face.
Something in her expression changed.
Not recognition exactly.
Fear.
“You’re Nia.”
I stopped breathing for a moment.
“You know my name?”
She tightened her grip on the door.
“You need to talk to him, not me.”
I gave a small, bitter smile.
“So there is something to talk about.”
A car passed behind me. Somewhere down the street, someone was mowing a lawn.
The ordinary sounds made the moment feel worse.
The world was continuing while mine split open.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Tasha.”
“How long have you been here, Tasha?”
She looked toward the hallway behind her.
“I’m not doing this on the porch.”
“That makes two of us.”
I stepped closer.
She moved outside and pulled the door almost shut behind her, leaving a narrow opening.
“Nia,” she said, lowering her voice. “He told me you two were finished.”
The anger in my face disappeared so quickly that she saw it happen.
I could tell.
Her shoulders dropped.
“What?”
“He said you separated months ago.”
I stared at her.
Yesterday morning, my husband had kissed my forehead while I packed his lunch.
Yesterday afternoon, he had asked whether I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with his mother.
Last night, he had fallen asleep with his hand resting against my waist.
“Finished?” I whispered.
Tasha swallowed.
“He said the divorce was taking time.”
I opened my handbag with fingers that suddenly felt clumsy.
My phone slipped against the lining before I caught it.
I opened the photograph my sister had taken the previous evening.
Andre and me at her birthday dinner.
His arm around my shoulders. My cheek pressed against his. Both of us smiling beneath the restaurant lights.
I turned the screen toward Tasha.
“This was last night.”
She stared.
Then she looked at the date.
Then at my wedding ring.
The color seemed to leave her face.
“He told me you only wore that because you wouldn’t accept it.”
A strange sound escaped my mouth.
Not a laugh.
Not quite a sob.
“He told you I was chasing him?”
Her silence answered.
I looked past her through the opening.
A framed photograph sat on the entry table.
Andre and Tasha.
I recognized the frame.
His mother had given it to us for our fifth anniversary.
He had said it broke during the move.
My stomach twisted.
“How long?” I asked again.
“Eight months.”
We had celebrated seven years of marriage three months ago.
Eight months.
I pressed my phone against my chest.
Tasha covered her mouth.
“Oh, God.”
I wanted to hate her.
It would have been easier.
I had driven there ready to accuse a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.
But she was looking at my photograph with the same expression I could feel pulling at my own face.
“Did you know we still lived together?”
“No.”
“Did you know he took me away for our anniversary?”
“No.”
“Did you know he asked me last week if I wanted to start trying for a baby?”
Her eyes filled.
“No.”
That answer hurt more than the others.
We had spent two years discussing the right time.
I had put money aside. Taken extra orders at my furniture studio. Worked late because he said a stronger financial cushion would help us become parents without fear.
And all that time, he had been building another life behind this door.
Tasha looked back toward the house.
“Then he lied to both of us.”
I heard movement inside.
A cupboard closing.
Footsteps crossing a floor.
For a moment, I could almost pretend nothing had happened.
I knew those sounds.
I knew the way Andre walked when he was barefoot.
I knew the little pause before he called across a room.
“Tasha, who’s at the door?”
His voice reached us from somewhere deeper inside.
Warm.
Comfortable.
At home.
Tasha went still.
So did I.
There was a coffee stain on the porch near my shoe. A small brown mark in the sunlight.
I focused on it because I was afraid that if I looked up, I would fall apart before I could speak.
My husband was inside.
Not inspecting a property.
Not meeting a contractor.
Inside, calling another woman’s name as naturally as he called mine.
Tasha’s hand trembled against the door.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered.
I looked at her properly then.
She was younger than me, but not by much.
Her auburn hair was straight and carefully brushed. Her eyes were swollen in a way that suggested she had already been crying that morning.
I wondered what he had done before I arrived.
What argument he had ended with a kiss.
What lie she had accepted because she loved him.
Another footstep sounded.
My phone buzzed in my hand.
A message from Andre.
Running behind, baby. Contractor problems. Don’t wait on me for lunch.
I showed it to Tasha.
She read it.
Then she closed her eyes.
Something inside me settled.
Not peace.
Something harder.
I stopped gripping my handbag.
I stopped trying to understand how a man could kiss one woman goodnight and wake up beside another.
Understanding could wait.
The truth was standing a few feet away, still believing he could choose which version of himself came to the door.
I lifted my chin and turned slowly toward the hallway.
“Perfect,” I said coldly.
May you like
My voice carried through the opening.
“Let’s ask him together.”
