HIS DISCARDED WIFE

CHAPTER 5 - THE LIE

"You can stop pretending."

I haven't even gotten both feet through the door.

"Pretending what, Jack?"

"That you don't know why I stopped loving you."

I sit in the car outside longer than I mean to before coming in, the engine ticking as it cools, every light in the house already on like someone's expecting me. I only came for what's left of my things. A few boxes. My mother's necklace. The albums Jack never wanted on the mantel because they made the house look, in his words, too lived-in.

"I don't know why," I say. "I've spent two days trying to figure out what I did, and I keep coming up with nothing, Jack."

He pulls his phone from his pocket instead of answering and swipes it awake.

A photograph. Me, standing close to a man in a black suit, our heads bent toward each other outside a restaurant entrance.

"Who is that?"

"You tell me."

He swipes again. Another photo of me walking out of an office, him a step behind, his hand briefly at my elbow. A string of messages. Times. Dates.

The room narrows around the screen, the edges are soft and grey. I hear my own pulse before I hear my own voice.

"That's Dr. Thomas." The words come out too flat, too careful.

"Nichols. My oncologist."

"That's not what it looks like."

"It's what it is." I reach for the phone. He pulls it back before I can hold it steady. "Jack, those are appointments. That's my treatment plan. He touched my elbow because I nearly fell walking out of a scan that told me my cancer had spread."

"You never mentioned him."

"Because there was nothing to mention."

"Six meetings. In four months."

"I was dying." My throat closes around the rest of it. When I get it out, it comes out smaller than I want. "I had six meetings with the man trying to stop that from happening."

He doesn't answer right away, and the silence sits wrong in my chest, presses down on it, makes the air feel thinner than it should.

"Did you ever ask me?" I say. "Before the affair. Before the papers. Before your mother threw me into the street. Did you ever once sit me down and ask if it was true?"

"I saw the pictures."

"That's not the same as asking."

"I didn't need to ask. It was right there."

"Right, it isn't the same as true."

"It looked true."

"It's supposed to look true. That's the entire point of a lie." I hear myself say it and know, the second it's out, that it's exactly right. "Who gave you this, Jack?"

His jaw works. He doesn't answer.

"Who gave it to you?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters more than anything else in this house."

He looks away first. That's new. He never looked away at first.

"What's going on in here?"

Georgina doesn't wait for an answer. She walks past me like I'm furniture and puts her hand flat on Jack's chest, thumb hooking into his collar to straighten it, a gesture too familiar to be anything but practiced.

"Nothing that concerns you."

"Everything in this house concerns me now." Her hand doesn't leave Jack's collar.

"Jack, sweetheart, what did she say to upset you?"

"She's trying to make it about her doctor."

"Nichols?" Her laugh comes out short and sharp, nothing warm in it at all.

"Of course she is. Deny, deflect. That's what people do when they've been caught."

"I wasn't caught doing anything."

"Weren't you?" She finally turns, and there's nothing soft left in her face, nothing I recognize from three weeks of hospital visits and onion rings.

"Six meetings in four months, Lauren. Alone. With a man who isn't your husband. Call it whatever you want."

"You know exactly what those meetings were."

"I know what you told me they were."

"Don't." My voice shakes and I hate that it does. "Not you. Not on top of everything else."

"Do what? Tell the truth?" She steps closer to Jack, closer to me, until there's barely room left between us. "She's embarrassed. That's all this is. She got caught, and now she wants you to feel guilty for noticing."

"I didn't have an affair."

"Prove it."

"I shouldn't have to prove anything to you."

"You should have thought about that before you started sneaking off to see him."

I reached out and pulled her hand off his collar before I've decided to do it. Heat climbs up my neck, into my face, and the edges of the room go slightly too bright, like someone's turned up every lamp at once.

"Don't touch him while you're lying about me."

"Get your hand off me."

"Not until you tell him the truth."

She yanks free hard enough that I stumble onto the console table. A lamp rattles against the wood. She doesn't apologize. She squares up instead, chin lifted.

"You want to hit me? Go ahead. Give Jack one more reason."

"Enough." Jack's voice cuts through both of us, but it isn't me he steps toward. He puts himself beside Georgina, not between us.

"Lauren, you need to leave."

"I came for my boxes."

"Now. Before this gets worse than it already is."

I look at Georgina one more time. She's already smoothing her hair back into place, composing herself for whatever comes next, and there isn't a trace of guilt anywhere on her face.

I leave without my boxes.

—

Driving feels shorter than it should. I don't remember most of it. My hands are steady on the wheel while my mind replays six meetings that took four months and somehow became the reason my marriage ended in one night and the reason Georgina put her hand on his chest like she'd earned the right to.

A sharp vibration pulled my attention to my phone.

Unknown number. The same one from two nights ago. The message I never opened.

I open it now.

A photograph loads slowly, one grainy strip at a time. Me and Nichols, closer than either of the others, angled in a way that turns an ordinary conversation into something it never was.

Beneath it, one line.

You should have been more careful about who you trusted.

Before I can set the phone down, it vibrates again.

Same number.

A single pin drop, coordinates instead of an address, and beneath it four words

That stops my breath somewhere between my chest and my throat

I'm closer than you think.