She opened the door wider. I think she did it without deciding to. And in the hallway behind her, leaning against the wall by the stairs, there was a kid’s bike. Pink, with the training wheels still on and streamers on the handlebars, and a little pair of shoes kicked off next to it.
I heard a TV going somewhere in the back of the house, cartoons, that high silly music. She saw me looking and she put her hand over her mouth. We just stood there. Two women, one doorway, and somewhere in that house a child who calls my husband daddy.
Her name is Lauren. I learned that standing in her kitchen twenty minutes later, both of us holding mugs of coffee neither of us drank, because what else do you do. She’d been with him six years. He told her he traveled for work, sales, three or four days at a time, and she never questioned it because why would you. I sat there and did the math on every weekend trip, every conference, every time he kissed me goodbye and rolled his suitcase out to the car. The little girl’s name is Sophie. She’s five. She came in once looking for juice and Lauren’s whole voice changed, light and easy, and she got her the juice and sent her back to the cartoons, and then her face dropped again the second the kid left. I will never understand how she did that. How either of them did any of it.
We talked for two hours. We compared things. Dates, stories, the way he hums when he’s lying, both of us knew that one. At some point I realized we weren’t enemies. We were the same person split down the middle, and that almost felt worse than if she’d been awful.
When I finally left she walked me to my car and we didn’t hug, we just kind of stood there, and she said take care of yourself, which is such a stupid normal thing to say but it was all there was.
The drive home I called the hospital to check he was stable. I didn’t ask to speak to him. I haven’t spoken to him yet, actually. That’s where I am right now, if you’re wondering why this reads like I’m still in the middle of it. I am. The eighteen thousand dollar bill is sitting on my counter with his name on it. David Mitchell. One of them.
