Chapter 2 - “I didn’t know you felt that way.”
“That’s the problem.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“I can change.”
I believed that too.
People could change.
The more difficult question was whether change obligated anyone else to wait for them.
“I’m not making any decisions today,” I said.
Daniel nodded too quickly.
“Okay.”
“I mean that.”
“I understand.”
“No, you hear possibility and think it means we’re fixing this.”
His expression tightened.
“What do you want me to do?”
“For today?”
“Yes.”
“Tell Madison the truth.”
His face went still.
“What truth?”
“That I know. That you’re not going to keep managing two separate realities and waiting to see which one works better.”
“I can end it.”
“That’s your decision.”
“Emily.”
“I’m not supervising your affair, Daniel.”
He leaned back.
I opened the door.
“There’s something else,” I said.
“What?”
“If you’re going to tell me the truth, tell me all of it. Not pieces you think I can tolerate.”
“I have.”
I looked at him.
Perhaps it was instinct.
Perhaps six months of learning to breathe slowly had taught me to listen to pauses.
But something in his answer felt wrong.
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“Then we’ll talk tonight.”
At home, I showered and changed before visiting my parents.
My mother opened the door before I knocked.
One look at my face and she said, “Tea or wine?”
“It’s eleven in the morning.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“Tea.”
“Bad, then.”
I followed her into the kitchen.
My father was outside pruning something that absolutely did not need pruning.
He had retired three years earlier and declared war on every shrub on their property.
Mom placed a mug in front of me.
“What happened?”
“Daniel is having an affair.”
Her hand stopped.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she sat beside me.
Not across from me.
Beside me.
“Are you sure?”
“I read the messages. He admitted it.”
Mom closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, they were wet.
“Oh, Emily.”
“I’m okay.”
“That sentence is genetic. I say it when I’m not okay too.”
I stared into my tea.
“I don’t know what I want.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I thought you’d tell me to leave him.”
“No.”
That surprised me.
Mom folded her hands.
“If I tell you to leave and you stay, you’ll feel ashamed to talk to me. If I tell you to stay and you leave, you’ll wonder whether you disappointed me. You’re forty-one years old. This is your marriage.”
I leaned against her shoulder like I hadn’t since college.
After a while, Dad came inside.
He saw us and stopped.
Mom looked at him.
“Daniel has been seeing someone else.”
My father’s face emptied.
I sat upright immediately.
“Dad.”
He raised both hands.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“I know that face.”
“What face?”
“The one you had when the contractor installed the wrong windows.”
“That was different. Those windows were unacceptable.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Dad sat across from me.
“You staying here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can.”
“I know.”
He nodded.
Then his eyes shifted toward Mom.
Something passed between them.
It was quick.
But I saw it.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Mom said.
I looked at Dad.
He studied the table.
Suddenly I was alert.
“What?”
Mom sighed.
“Your father and I promised each other years ago that we wouldn’t interfere in your marriage.”
“That sounds like the beginning of interfering.”
Dad rubbed his forehead.
“There’s something you should know.”
My stomach tightened.
“About Daniel?”
“Yes.”
Mom touched his arm.
“Robert.”
“She asked.”
“What happened?”
Dad exhaled.
“Two years ago, Daniel came to see me.”
Two years.
The beginning of everything changing.
“What did he want?”
“A loan.”
I blinked.
“Why?”
“He said he had made an investment that went badly. He needed sixty thousand dollars.”
I stared at him.
Daniel and I did not have separate finances.
At least, I had never believed we did.
“Did you give it to him?”
“No.”
Dad’s expression carried a strange mixture of regret and discomfort.
“I asked him whether you knew.”
“And?”
“He said yes.”
I stood so quickly my chair scraped the floor.
Mom reached for me.
“Emily.”
“I didn’t know.”
Dad’s face hardened, not with anger but realization.
“I suspected that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because two days later he called and said he had solved the problem. He asked me not to mention it because you were embarrassed about the investment.”
I almost couldn’t speak.
“I didn’t know.”
Mom stood beside me.
“Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re pale.”
That sounded like Ryan.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, the thought steadied me.
I sat.
Dad went to his office and returned carrying an old folder.
“I kept the paperwork he showed me.”
“What paperwork?”
“Statements. He wanted the loan quickly, so I asked for something explaining the loss.”
He handed me a photocopy.
I looked at the investment name.
A private development company I had never heard of.
Below it was Daniel’s signature.
And another name.
Mercer & Lane Holdings.
“Who is Lane?” I asked.
Dad shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
I read the page again.
There were transfers from an account ending in numbers I didn’t recognize.
Not ours.
Or not one I knew about.
Mom lowered herself into the chair across from me.
“Emily, this may have nothing to do with the affair.”
“I know.”
But something had begun to form in my mind.
Daniel had said the distance between us came from work.
Then success.
Then Madison.
Yet two years earlier, before Madison entered his department, he had already been hiding something substantial enough to ask my father for sixty thousand dollars.
I photographed every page.
At home that evening, Daniel was cooking.
Actually cooking.
Pasta sauce simmered on the stove.
A bottle of wine sat unopened on the counter.
There were flowers on the table.
Not roses.
Peonies.
My favorite.
Once upon a time, the sight would have softened me immediately.
Daniel turned.
“I didn’t know what time you’d be home.”
“I went to see my parents.”
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
I put my purse down.
“Why did you ask my father for sixty thousand dollars?”
The wooden spoon stopped in his hand.
For the second time that day, Daniel Mercer went completely pale.
And that was when I understood.
May you like
The affair was not the first secret in my marriage.
It might not even be the biggest.
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