TEA FOR THE MISTRESS

Chapter 1: 2:30 a.m

Rebecca’s POV

It was 2:30 a.m. when I rolled over and reached for Edmund out of habit.

My eyes were still heavy, half-stuck in sleep, my hand moving to his side of the bed the way it always did automatic, unthinking, the gesture of a body that has shared a bed with someone long enough to stop being conscious about it.

There was nothing there.

Just cold sheets and empty space where his warmth should have been.

I frowned. My fingers stretched a little further across the mattress like maybe I had misjudged the distance, like he would appear if I reached far enough. But he didn’t. The sheets on his side were smooth and undisturbed in a way that told me he hadn’t been there for a while. Not just stepped away. Gone long enough that all the warmth had left.

I lay still for a moment, blinking at the ceiling.

Bathroom, I told myself. Obviously. Go back to sleep.

But the house was too quiet. Not the quiet of someone who has just stepped out, that kind of quiet still carries a presence in it. This was different. Thick and hollow. The kind that doesn’t feel like someone stepped out. It feels like absence. Like the room itself had registered something I hadn’t yet.

I sat up.

My heart wasn’t racing. I wasn’t panicking. There was no single alarm going off, just that quiet, nameless unease that lives in the body before it reaches the mind. I pulled my robe off the chair, tied it loosely, and stepped into the hallway.

That was when I heard it.

A voice. Low and careful, the specific register of someone who is aware of the silence around them and working to stay beneath it. Edmund’s voice. Coming from downstairs.

I stood at the top of the staircase and listened. I don’t know why I didn’t call his name. I just didn’t. Something about the quality of his voice held me still. Clipped and measured. Not the voice of a man handling a work emergency. The voice of a man choosing every single word before letting it out of his mouth.

I moved down slowly, keeping my steps light against the marble.

“…we’ll handle it tomorrow.”

A pause.

“…no, not now. I said tomorrow.”

I turned the corner and stepped into the living room doorway.

His head came up immediately.

And for one second, one unguarded second, something crossed his face. Not guilt. Not anger. Just pure, sharp surprise. The involuntary kind that arrives before a person has time to decide what you should see.

Then it was gone. Wiped clean so fast I almost questioned whether I had seen it at all.

“Mr. Smith,” he said smoothly, his tone shifting registers without a stumble. “We’ll continue this in the morning. At the office.” A short pause. “I need to get back to my wife.”

I kept a small smile on my face. Said nothing. Just watching him, the way he held the phone, the way he was already composing himself back into the Edmund I knew before he had even ended the call.

He walked toward me. Face settled. Calm. Untroubled.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

“I woke up and you weren’t there,” I said softly.

He nodded once. The kind of nod designed to function as an answer without actually being one.

“Work,” he said simply, already gesturing toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go back to bed.”

Work.

At 2:30 in the morning. Said with the ease of a man who had used that word so many times it had stopped requiring supporting evidence.

I didn’t say anything. I turned and walked back up beside him and the whole way up the stairs I turned that word over in my mind. Work. Just work. Said so cleanly. So completely without friction.

I lay back down. Edmund settled beside me and within minutes his breathing evened out into sleep that effortless, untroubled sleep of a man with a clear conscience or a very practiced one. I stared at the ceiling and waited for the unease to leave me.

It didn’t. It just made itself more comfortable.

By morning I had almost convinced myself I was overthinking. I am embarrassingly good at that at taking something that sits wrong and turning it over until I find the angle that makes it look like nothing. I have always been good at giving Edmund the benefit of a doubt he hadn’t asked for.

I stood in the kitchen that morning turning pancakes, watching the edges brown just right, waving the maids off the way I always did.

“I’ve got it.”

It was never really about the pancakes. It was about the ritual of it doing something warm and ordinary and intentional for the person I had built my life around. Proof that we were still the version of us I was quietly holding onto.

I heard his footsteps on the stairs at exactly the right time. Edmund was never late. Never hurried. Everything about him was precise including the distance he had been maintaining for months that I had been busily explaining away.

I turned with a smile.

“Hey baby. Ready for work?”

He walked in already dressed, already somewhere else in his head. He looked at me the way you look at a room you are passing through rather than a person you are arriving to.

“Morning,” he said. Just that. Deposited into the air without warmth or weight.

“I made pancakes. Your favorite.”

“I’m not eating this morning. I’ve got a meeting in thirty minutes.”

I glanced at the clock. 7:20.

“It’s still early. Even just a bite.”

“Not today, Rebecca.”

“Rebecca” not baby. Not sweetheart. Just Rebecca. Flat and final and stripped of everything that used to live inside the way he said my name.

My fingers tightened on the edge of the tray. I let go just as quickly. Smoothed my expression before anything reached my face.

“Alright,” I said. Easy. Calm. Nothing in my voice I hadn’t chosen to put there.

He grabbed his keys. No kisses. No hand on my waist. No backward glance or small tenderness that tells a person they are seen. Just footsteps and then the front door and then the particular silence of a house that has just had something leave it that didn’t announce it was going.

I stood there looking at a plate of untouched pancakes.

Then I exhaled and turned around.

“Prep vegetables and rice,” I told the chef. “I’ll have it sent to his office.”

“Yes ma.”

I picked up my phone. Stared at the screen. Put it back down. Picked it up again. I was restless in that specific way where your body is still but your mind is already moving, already pulling at threads, already doing the quiet work of a person who has decided they need to see something for themselves.

The feeling from last night hadn’t gone anywhere. Watching him walk out that door without looking back had made it louder.

“Actually,” I said. “Make it fast. I’ll take it myself. Have the driver ready.”

“Yes ma.”

I nodded. To myself, mostly.

Because somewhere underneath all of that calm underneath the untouched pancakes and the quiet house and the word work said too smoothly at 2:30 in the morning I had already made up my mind.

I wasn’t going to spiral. I wasn’t going to confront him with nothing in my hands. But I was going to see. With my own two eyes. On my own terms.

Whatever I found whatever the next few hours put in front of me I was going to look at it directly.

That particular kindness to myself was finished.