My Mother's Husband

The Sound of Forgetting

Three weeks passed between the night I met Damian and the night I stopped being able to pretend.

Three weeks of dinners, of lingering glances across tables, of finding excuses to be in the same room as him. Three weeks of my mother glowing like a woman who'd finally been allowed to breathe. Three weeks of me lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, replaying every word he'd said to me like a song I couldn't get out of my head.

He was at the house constantly now. His toothbrush appeared in my mother's bathroom. His shoes lined up by the front door. His scent — cedar and something darker, like smoke and leather — lingered on the sofa cushions after he left. I found myself pressing my face into them when no one was watching, breathing him in, hating myself for it.

My mother was happy. Genuinely, stupidly, radiantly happy. She laughed more. She bought new clothes — things that showed her collarbone, her waist, the body she'd hidden for years under oversized cardigans and motherhood. She looked younger than I'd ever seen her, which was strange because she'd been young when she had me. But this was different. This was the youth she'd never gotten to have.

I tried to be happy for her. I really did.

But every time Damian said my name — Lena — with that slow, deliberate rasp, something inside me cracked open a little more.

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It was a Saturday night. Rain hammered against the windows, the kind of storm that made the power flicker and the trees outside scratch against the glass like fingernails. My mother and Damian had gone out to dinner at some fancy Italian place downtown. I'd stayed home, claiming I had a paper to write, but really I'd spent the evening lying on my bed, listening to the rain, feeling sorry for myself.

By eleven, I was hungry. The risotto from three weeks ago was a distant memory, and the fridge contained nothing but wilted lettuce, hummus, and a half-empty bottle of white wine that my mother had opened on Tuesday and forgotten about. I pulled on a robe — thin silk, a gift from my grandmother that I usually found too revealing, but tonight I couldn't be bothered to care — and padded barefoot down the hallway toward the kitchen.

The house was dark except for the blue glow of the living room TV, which someone had left on. I assumed my mother and Damian weren't home yet. Their bedroom door was at the far end of the hallway, closed, no light underneath.

I was wrong.

As I passed their door, I heard something that stopped me cold.

A moan.

Not a pained sound — the opposite. A deep, throaty, feminine sound that I recognized immediately as my mother's voice, even though I'd never heard it like this before. It was low and raw and utterly uninhibited, the sound of someone who had forgotten she shared a house with anyone else.

I should have kept walking.

I should have gone to the kitchen, made myself a sandwich, put in my earbuds, and pretended I hadn't heard a thing.

Instead, I stopped.

My heart slammed against my ribs. My bare feet seemed glued to the hardwood floor. The rain hammered louder, but not loud enough to drown out what came next.

"That's it," Damian's voice — low, dark, controlled even now. "Just like that."

Another moan from my mother, higher this time, broken into pieces. Then the unmistakable rhythm of a bed frame knocking against the wall. Slow at first. Then faster.

I couldn't move.

I shouldn't have been standing there. Every instinct told me to walk away, to preserve some shred of dignity, to not be the kind of person who eavesdrops on her own mother having s*x. But my body wasn't listening. My body had turned to stone, except for the parts that were suddenly, traitorously, warm.

The door wasn't fully closed. There was a gap — maybe an inch — where the latch hadn't caught. Just enough for a slice of lamplight to spill into the hallway.

Just enough for me to see.

I told myself I was just checking that the door was shut. I told myself I would glance, confirm that they were fine, and leave.

I pressed my eye to the gap.

The room was dim, lit only by a single lamp on the nightstand. The sheets were tangled, half on the floor. My mother was on her hands and knees in the center of the bed, her back arched, her face buried in the pillow. Her hair — usually straightened, controlled — was a wild mess down her spine. She was naked, completely naked, and I realized with a strange jolt that I'd never seen my mother like that before. Not as a woman. Not as someone desired.

And behind her, kneeling, fully clothed except for his unzipped pants, was Damian.

He wasn't making love to her. He was taking her. His hands were wrapped around her hips, fingers digging into the soft flesh hard enough to leave bruises. His jaw was set, his dark hair falling across his forehead, his amber eyes half-closed in concentration. Every thrust was deliberate, measured, like he was trying to prove something.

"Say my name," he growled.

"Damian," my mother whimpered into the pillow.

"Louder."

"Damian."

He pulled out suddenly, turned her over, and pushed her back against the mattress. She sprawled beneath him, legs open, chest heaving. He loomed over her, one hand braced beside her head, the other sliding down her stomach, between her thighs. She gasped, her back bowing off the bed.

"You're so wet," he said, almost wondering. "All for me?"

"All for you," she breathed. "Always for you."

He lowered his mouth to her neck, biting, sucking, marking. Her hands fumbled at his belt, his shirt buttons, trying to undress him. He let her — but only for a moment. Then he caught her wrists, pinned them above her head, and drove into her again.

My mother cried out. Not in pain. In surrender.

I watched them the way you watch a car crash — knowing you should look away, physically unable to do so. The curve of Damian's back as he moved. The flex of his shoulders under the still-buttoned shirt. The way my mother's legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper, her ankles crossing like she was holding on for dear life.

And then — God help me — I looked at his face.

His eyes were open. And they were looking directly at the door.

At me.

Time stopped. The rain faded. The sound of my mother's moans became distant, underwater. All I could see were those amber eyes, fixed on the crack in the door, fixed on mine.

He knew I was there.

He had always known.

A slow smile spread across his face — not friendly, not warm. Triumphant. Predatory. The smile of a man who had been waiting for this exact moment.

I stumbled backward, hitting the wall with a soft thud. My hand flew to my mouth to stifle a gasp. Inside the bedroom, my mother was still moaning, still oblivious, still lost in him. But Damian wasn't lost at all. He was perfectly, terrifyingly present.

He held my gaze for one more heartbeat. Then, deliberately, he closed his eyes and buried his face in my mother's neck, and I heard him say something I wasn't supposed to hear.

"I'll take care of you, Margaret. Both of you."

Both of you.

I ran.

I didn't walk. I didn't creep. I ran down the hallway, bare feet slapping against the hardwood, and barely made it to my bedroom before my knees gave out. I locked the door behind me — something I hadn't done since I was fifteen and afraid of thunderstorms — and slid down to the floor, my back against the wood, my heart a wild animal in my chest.

The robe had come undone. I didn't remember that happening. I pulled it closed with shaking hands, but the damage was done. My body was responding in ways I couldn't control — a flush across my chest, a throbbing low in my belly, a slickness between my thighs that had nothing to do with the rain.

He saw me.

He knew I was there.

He didn't stop.

I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to erase the image of his smile, the way he'd looked at me while buried inside my mother. But it was branded there, permanent, like an afterimage from staring at the sun.

From the other end of the hallway, I heard a door open. Footsteps. Not my mother's — too heavy, too deliberate.

They stopped outside my bedroom.

I held my breath.

A long silence. Then, so quiet I almost missed it, a low voice through the wood.

"Goodnight, Lena."

I didn't answer. I couldn't.

After a moment, the footsteps retreated. A door closed. The house fell silent except for the rain.

I stayed on the floor for a long time. When I finally stood up, my legs were shaking. I looked at myself in the mirror above my dresser — flushed cheeks, dilated pupils, lips parted like I'd just run a marathon. I looked like someone who had seen something she shouldn't have.

Or maybe I looked like someone who had finally seen the truth.

He wasn't going to marry my mother because he loved her.

Or maybe he did love her. Maybe that was real.

But that smile — that knowing, hungry smile — hadn't been for her.

It had been for me.

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