60 Days Until I Divorce My Husband

Chapter 1

ROSALINE POV

I almost didn't go.

His assistant had called me at six, said Julian skipped lunch again, said he'd probably forget dinner too if no one brought it. And I thought, okay. I'll go. Because that was the kind of wife I was. The kind who noticed. The kind who showed up even when she wasn't asked to.

I made his favorite soup. Packed it carefully. Drove forty minutes across the city telling myself he would be grateful, or at least he would eat something, and maybe tonight he would come home before midnight and we would sit together the way we used to.

I was always making up small hopes like that. It was a habit I couldn't break.

His office door was halfway open.

I heard a woman's voice first. Then his laugh. Not his polite laugh, not the one he used in meetings. The real one. The quiet one. The one I used to think only I could pull out of him.

I pushed the door open.

She was sitting on the edge of his desk and he was leaning toward her and his hand was resting on her arm and everything about the way they were positioned said that this was not new. That was the part that hit me first. Not the anger. Not even the pain. Just the quiet, horrible understanding that this had been going on long enough for them to be comfortable.

He hadn't heard me come in.

He was looking at her and he said, softly, "Rose."

I felt that word move through me like something cold.

Rose was my name. The name he gave me. He started calling me that in our second month of dating, said it suited me better than Rosalie, said he wanted something that was just his. I let him have it because I was in love with him and I thought that was romantic. I had no idea he was just practicing.

He turned and saw me standing there.

"Rosalie." His voice changed. Tightened. "How long have you been standing there?"

I looked at him. I looked at her. She had the decency to look slightly uncomfortable, which I noted and filed away for later, for some future version of myself who would have the energy to be angry about it.

"I brought food," I said. "I'll leave it on the desk."

"Wait"

"Eat when you can." I set the bag down without looking at him again. "I have a headache. I'll see you at home."

I left.

I made it to the elevator before my hands started shaking. I pressed the button for the lobby and stared at the floor and breathed through my mouth the way you do when you're trying not to cry in a public place. The doors opened. I walked through the lobby. I walked to my car.

I sat in the driver's seat for a long time without starting the engine.

The worst part was that I wasn't even surprised. That's what I kept coming back to, sitting in that dark parking garage. I wasn't surprised. Some part of me had already known, had been quietly knowing for months, and I had been walking around choosing not to look at it directly the way you avoid looking at something you're afraid will look back.

I thought about the last time Julian and I had a real conversation. Not logistics. Not schedules or dinners or did you call the contractor about the kitchen. A real one, where we talked about something that mattered.

I couldn't remember when.

I drove home. I changed my clothes. I sat on the bathroom floor because my legs were tired and the floor was cool and I needed a moment where nothing was required of me.

And then I remembered.

I had been telling myself it was stress. Eleven days late and I had been telling myself it was stress because I had enough to manage already and I couldn't afford for this to also be true. But sitting on the bathroom floor with my husband's voice still in my head saying another woman's version of my name, I finally stopped pretending.

I drove to the pharmacy. I bought three tests. I came back and took all three of them because I needed to be sure, I needed there to be no room left for doubt.

They all said the same thing.

I sat there for a while.

I didn't feel joy. I didn't feel devastated. I felt something quieter than both, something that sat heavy in the center of my chest and didn't move. I was pregnant with Julian Pierce's child on the same night I watched him touch another woman like she was someone he had been missing for a long time.

I wrapped the tests and buried them in the trash. Washed my face. Went to the kitchen and drank a glass of water standing at the counter in the dark.

Julian came home at eleven forty-three.

I heard his key in the lock, heard him set his bag down, heard his footsteps move through the house toward the bedroom. I was already in bed with the lamp off and my eyes closed, and I listened to him undress in the dark and get into bed beside me.

He didn't say anything.

Neither did I.

He was asleep within minutes. I could tell by his breathing. And I lay there beside him in the bed we had shared for four years and stared at the ceiling and thought about the fact that I was carrying his child and he did not know, and the woman he called Rose tonight was not me, and at some point while I wasn't paying attention my marriage had become a place where I was completely alone.

I didn't sleep.

By morning, I had made a decision.