My husband betrayed the wrong woman

"Sign the papers, Stevie. Don't make this harder than it needs to be." Trevor slid the divorce papers across the marble counter like he was passing me a grocery list. His wedding ring was already off. I hadn't even noticed when he took it off. Maybe last night. Maybe last week. Maybe he never really wore it when I wasn't looking. I stared at the pen beside the papers. My hand wouldn't move. "Three years," I whispered. "We've been married three years." "And they were three years too long." He didn't even flinch saying it. "Joan is pregnant. I'm marrying her next month. The sooner you sign, the sooner we can all move on." Joan. My cousin Joan. The one who slept in our guest room every weekend because she said she was "lonely." The one I cooked breakfast for. The one I lent my favorite earrings to two weeks ago and never asked back because she cried when I mentioned it. That Joan. My stomach twisted so hard I thought I might be sick right there on the kitchen floor. I gripped the edge of the counter to keep my knees from giving out. "How long?" My voice came out small. Too small. "Stevie, don't do this." "How long, Trevor." He sighed like I was the one being unreasonable. Like I was the one who'd ripped a marriage apart in our own guest bedroom. "Two years," he said. Two years. I'd been married two years when it started. I'd been making her chicken soup when she had the flu. I'd been holding her hand at her father's funeral. I'd been buying her birthday cake every July while she was sleeping with my husband. A laugh bubbled up out of me before I could stop it. It sounded broken even to my own ears. "You think this is funny?" Trevor's jaw tightened. "No." I wiped my cheek and was surprised to find it wet. I hadn't even known I was crying. "I think I'm an i***t. There's a difference." There was something else, too. Something I hadn't told him yet. Something I'd been carrying around in the bottom of my purse for two days now in a long white envelope I kept pulling out and putting back like it might say something different the next time I opened it. The letter from the gallery downtown. I'd taken three years of weekends to learn to paint properly, in secret, in a tiny rented studio on the other side of the city that Trevor didn't know existed. I hadn't even told Aunt Bea, not really. It was the one thing in my life that was just mine. And two weeks ago I'd submitted six pieces to a juried show, the kind of show where galleries actually buy work, the kind of show where careers started, and three days ago the letter had come. Dear Ms. Reed, we are delighted to inform you that all six of your submitted works have been accepted, and one has been pre-purchased by a private collector at the asking price of forty thousand dollars. Forty thousand dollars. For a painting I'd done at three in the morning while Trevor was off "working late" with my cousin. I'd read that letter sitting in my car in a grocery store parking lot, and I hadn't felt joy. I'd felt sick. Because the very first thought in my head had been, I can't tell him. He'll be furious that I have something he doesn't control. The second thought had been, Why am I more afraid of telling my husband good news than bad? The third thought I hadn't let myself finish. I looked at Trevor now, with his rolled up sleeves and his clean fingernails and his face that I had loved once, and I understood the third thought. I was happier about the letter when he wasn't in the room. "Stevie." His voice had that edge now, the one he used when I was taking too long to agree with him. "The pen. Sign." I picked up the pen. My hand was shaking so badly the tip kept tapping the paper. Three years of being the stupidest woman in the city and not even knowing it. The pen touched the line. I closed my eyes. And then my phone rang. I almost didn't answer. But the name on the screen made me freeze. Aunt Beatrice. My mother's older sister. The one who raised me after my parents died in the car crash when I was twelve. The one who'd been in the hospital for the past month with something the doctors couldn't figure out. "Aunt Bea?" "Stevie, baby, where are you?" Her voice was thin, strange, like she'd been running. "I'm home, what's wrong?" "Don't sign anything. Whatever Trevor is making you sign, don't sign it. Not yet." My blood went cold. "How do you know about that?" "Just listen to me. There's something I should have told you a long time ago. Something about your mother. About who you really are." "Aunt Bea, you're scaring me." "I'm at the hospital. Come now. Please. Before someone else gets to you first." "Before someone else gets to me? What does that mean? Aunt Bea, what are you talking about?" The line went dead. I stared at my phone. Then at the divorce papers. Then at Trevor, who was watching me with a look I couldn't read. "Who was that?" he asked. "None of your business anymore." I grabbed my purse off the counter. The pen rolled off the marble and clattered to the floor. I left it there. "Stevie. Stevie, where are you going? You need to sign these. Stevie!" I didn't look back. I walked out of the house I'd decorated, past the wedding photos I'd hung on the hallway wall, past the front door I'd painted blue last spring because Trevor said it would make him smile when he came home. I got in my car. My hands were still shaking too hard to put the key in. I finally got the key in and turned it. The engine started. My phone buzzed in my lap. A new message. From Aunt Bea. Stevie, please help me.