“Mommy, why does Uncle Greg sleep in Linda’s bed when Mr. Kevin is working at the Jeep plant?” my six-year-old daughter asked, her small mouth full of buttered toast.
I stood there with the glass coffee pot mid-air, my brain completely stalling as I stared at her messy pigtails.
The kitchen hummed with the quiet drone of the refrigerator, but suddenly everything else felt completely distant.
I set the pot down slowly, my hands shaking so hard the glass rattled against the counter. I tried to keep my voice completely flat and normal, but my stomach had already dropped into a cold, heavy pit.
“What did you say, sweetie?” I asked, turning around and leaning against the sink to support my trembling legs.
She shrugged, looking down at her bright pink glittery sleeping bag sitting on the kitchen floor. She had just come back from a weekend sleepover at my best friend Linda’s house.
“Uncle Greg,” she said, like she was explaining something simple to a toddler. “He sleeps in the big bed with Auntie Linda when Mr. Kevin goes to the late shift. He brings us pepperoni pizza. He lets us watch cartoons in the living room first.”
I felt a dull, heavy ache start behind my ribs. Greg is my husband of nine years. Kevin is Linda’s husband. Linda has been my absolute best friend since we were fifteen, clipping coupons and dreaming of our futures in Toledo, Ohio.
We met on the steps of Toledo Central Catholic High. We were sharing a bag of cheap chips and complaining about our algebra teacher. We became inseparable.
We did everything together. We got our driver’s licenses in the same month. We stood as maid of honor at each other’s weddings. When Linda married Kevin, and I married Greg, it felt like the perfect puzzle.
We bought houses just three miles apart, near the old park on the west side of town. We spent our weekends hosting barbecues, shopping for groceries at Meijer, and planning our lives. Our husbands became friends, or at least we thought they did.
I worked as a pediatric ER nurse at Mercy Hospital. It was a grueling job, filled with long, unpredictable twelve-hour shifts that left me completely exhausted. I would come home at seven in the morning with aching feet, smelling of antiseptic and stale hospital coffee.
