TEA FOR THE MISTRESS

Chapter 5: Dear Husband

REBECCA’S POV

I woke up with a decision already made.

No more dismissing. No more convincing myself I was overthinking. No more swallowing the unease and washing it down with a smile and a breakfast Edmund wouldn’t eat.

I was going to talk to someone who would tell me the truth without dressing it up in comfort I hadn’t asked for.

I needed Olivia.

I picked up my phone and dialed before I had fully sat up in bed. It rang once. I pulled the phone from my ear, looked at the screen, and dialed again.

She picked up on the second ring.

“Hello.”

A pause loaded with unmistakable amusement. “Seems like you finally remembered I exist.”

Any other morning I would have had something sharp to fire back. Not today.

“Olivia,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “I need to see you. Are you home? My marriage is falling apart.”

The teasing dropped out of her voice immediately.

“Your marriage?”

“Yes.”

A beat of silence. Then, “St. Laurent’s. Thirty minutes. Don’t be late.”

I got dressed quickly, without my usual deliberateness. No standing in front of the mirror considering options. I pulled on something clean and simple, grabbed my bag, and drove across town with the windows slightly down and my thoughts moving faster than the traffic.

St. Laurent’s was already warm and humming when I walked in soft lighting, low music, the kind of place that felt like it existed specifically for conversations you couldn’t have anywhere else. I had barely set my bag down when I heard my name.

“Becca.”

Olivia was already there, rising from her seat, and the moment she looked at my face her expression shifted completely. She crossed the space between us in three steps and pulled me into a hug before I could say a word.

I held on longer than I intended to.

I didn’t realize how much I needed that, the simple uncomplicated warmth of someone who had known me long enough to love me without conditions. Something loosened slightly in my chest. Not break. Just loosen.

“You look pale,” she said, pulling back to look at me properly, hands still on my shoulders. “Talk to me. What is happening?”

We sat. I wrapped both hands around the glass of vodka I ordered and took one slow sip before I looked at her.

“Edmund is divorcing me,” I said.

I watched her face carefully it was half braced for pity, that particular expression people arrange when they don’t know what else to offer. But Olivia’s face did something different entirely. Her jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. Her eyes went flat in the specific way they did when she was containing something she had been sitting on for a long time.

“Why does that not surprise me,” she said quietly.

“Olivia…”

“I told you, Becca.” Her voice wasn’t unkind but it wasn’t soft either. “I told you Edmund didn’t love you the way you believed he did. I said it and you…”

“I know,” I said. “I know you did. But I didn’t call you here for that. I already know the truth. I need you to help me figure out what to do with it.”

She stopped. Looked at me for a moment with the assessing attention of a woman recalibrating. Then she nodded once, the nod of someone who understood she had almost gotten in her own way, and leaned back in her chair.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”

I removed my glasses and set them on the table. Looked at her directly so she would understand I meant every word.

“I have been with that man for five years, Liv. Five years of planning his birthdays, supporting his business, keeping his home, being everything a wife is supposed to be. I was good to him. I was genuinely good at that marriage.” I paused. “I cannot let him discard me like I meant nothing. I won’t.”

Olivia reached across the table and covered my hands with hers. She didn’t rush to fill the silence. She just held them steady and let the weight of what I had said sit between us.

“You know I’m here,” she said finally. “Whatever you decide. I’m not going anywhere.”

I felt the tightness in my throat that I refused to let become anything more.

“Have you signed the papers?” she asked.

“No.” I said

She raised an eyebrow. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not ready. I need to understand exactly what I’m walking into before I put my name on anything.”

Olivia studied me with that particular look of hers, the one that meant she was reading between everything I was saying and finding the sentence I hadn’t said out loud yet. Then she nodded slowly.

“Don’t sign,” she said. “Not until you’re ready. Not until it’s on your terms.” She squeezed my hands once. “Whatever direction this goes, Becca, I will be standing right next to you.”

I hugged her very tightly, because I know I have a sister on a friend. Held on for just a moment longer than necessary. Then I drove home through the afternoon traffic with something that wasn’t quite peaceful but was at least closer to steadiness than I had felt in days.

The house was quiet when I got back.

I was heading straight for the stairs when I registered Edmund in the living room. Jacket still on. The particular posture of a man who had been waiting for an opportunity and had decided this was it, but I didn’t stop to greet

I kept walking.

“Have you signed those divorce papers?”

His voice stopped me at the foot of the stairs. I stood there for a second with my back to him, my hand resting lightly on the banister.

I turned around.

“I already told you, Edmund,” I said. My voice was even. Almost pleasant. “I am not signing the divorce papers. I don’t know how many different ways I can say it or how many times I need to repeat myself, I am not signing anything.”

He laughed.

Not a real laugh. The kind designed to make someone feel small, short and dismissive, edged with the particular condescension of a man who has decided the person in front of him isn’t worth taking seriously.

“Rebecca,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “What exactly do you think is going to happen here? Sign the document. End this. Stop dragging out something that is already over.”

I looked at him standing there. So composed. So certain. So completely convinced that he was holding every card in this conversation.

“Edmund,” I said.

He stopped.

“It would really be in your best interest to go to bed.” I tilted my head slightly. “You look tired. Tell the cook what you’d like to eat, you look hungry too, actually.” A small pause.

“Dear husband.”

I turned and walked up the stairs.

I didn’t rush. I didn’t look back. But I heard the silence behind me, the particular silence of a man standing at the bottom of a staircase watching his wife walk away from a conversation he thought he was controlling,

and something small and quiet settled in my chest like a key turning in a lock.

He had no idea what was coming.

And I intended to keep it that way for as long as it served me.

Which, if everything went the way I was beginning to think it would, it is going to be a very long time indeed.