My Husband Left Me for His Sick Mistress

At six in the morning, the penthouse was a hush of pale gray light. The marble under my bare feet was cold. I sat on the edge of the bathtub with the test stick in my hand and watched the second pink line darken until there was no more pretending.

Eight weeks. Maybe nine.

My thumb found the inside of my left wrist and pressed there. A small habit. A way to hold myself in one piece. I did it without thinking, the way some people pray.

I looked up at the mirror across from me. The woman in it had hair still damp at the temples, no makeup, a face two years older than the one Dutton Kelly married. I tried to picture telling him. I tried to picture his face when he saw the test, when he saw the small black-and-white printout I would tuck inside a card. He liked that little Italian place on Sixty-Third with the candles in old wine bottles. I could book the corner table. I could wear the navy dress he once said suited me.

For a moment I let myself believe it.

The thing I had built with him was hollow. I knew that better than anyone. But maybe a child could fill it. Maybe a real, living thing could grow inside the shape of what we pretended to be, and the pretending could become true. People said it happened. People wrote songs about it.

I laid my hand flat on my stomach. Still flat. Still mine.

'Hi,' I whispered. The word felt foolish in the marble quiet. I said it again anyway.

Dutton's side of the bed was already empty when I came out. It had been empty when I went to sleep too. I told myself he had an early flight.

***

He didn't come home that night. Or the next. Or the one after that.

I called the office on the second day. Adele Young picked up on the first ring, the way she always does. Her voice is the same temperature as bottled water.

'Mrs. Kelly. Mr. Kelly is in meetings until late. He asked me to drop off the Henderson files at the penthouse. Is seven all right.'

It wasn't a question. Not really. Adele doesn't ask questions.

'Seven is fine,' I said.

She came at seven exactly. She is always exact. She wore a charcoal blazer and the kind of low heels that make no sound on hardwood. She set the folder on the entryway console, slipped the blazer off her shoulders because the foyer was warm, and laid it over the back of the chair while she fished a second envelope out of her bag.

'These need his signature by Friday,' she said. 'I've flagged the pages.'

'Thank you.'

'Goodnight, Mrs. Kelly.'

She left. The blazer stayed.

I stood in the foyer for a long minute after the elevator chimed shut. Then I walked over and picked it up, meaning to hang it for her.