Chapter 4: The Woman Who Called Herself Renee
I didn't sleep.
By four in the morning I had read the message eleven times and typed six different replies and deleted every one of them.
At 4:17 I typed: *Who are you?*
The reply came in under a minute.
*The woman your husband told you didn't exist.*
I sat up.
My daughter made a small sound in her sleep and I put my hand on her back and kept it there.
*How did you get this number?*
*He had it saved in his phone.
I saw it once, months ago.
I memorized it because I thought I might need it someday.*
*Why are you telling me now?*
There was a longer pause this time.
*Because he told me tonight that you caught him.
And his first instinct was to call me and ask me to go quiet.
Not to come clean to you.
To ask me to disappear again.*
My hand went still on my daughter's back.
*He called you after I walked away.*
*Yes.*
I got out of bed.
I walked to the window.
The street outside was empty and dark and completely ordinary.
*What do you want?* I typed.
*Nothing from you.
I want you to know what actually happened.
You deserve that.*
I thought about saying no.
I thought about putting the phone down and going back to bed and deciding in the morning when I wasn't running on three hours of sleep and a shattered sense of reality.
Instead I typed: *Tell me.*
She called rather than texted.
I answered on the first ring and walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
Her voice was younger than I expected.
Steadier.
"We met at a conference eighteen months ago," she said.
"He told me he was unhappy.
That things at home were difficult.
That you two had been struggling for a long time."
Eighteen months ago.
We had been trying to get pregnant.
"He said that?" My voice came out flat.
"He said a lot of things.
I believed most of them because I had no reason not to." A pause.
"I'm not calling to make excuses for myself.
I knew he was married.
That's on me."
"When did it end?"
"He told me it was over in January.
Your daughter was born in February, right?"
"Yes."
"He ended it the week after he found out you were pregnant."
I sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
"He didn't end it because he wanted to," she said.
"He ended it because his mother found out and told him she would tell you herself if he didn't stop."
There it was.
*I'm done covering for you.*
His mother hadn't been protecting me.
She'd been managing him.
Keeping the secret contained.
Making sure it stayed buried so the family stayed intact.
"She knew the whole time," I said.
"From what he told me, she found out around November.
She gave him an ultimatum."
"And tonight, when he called you—"
"He asked me to delete everything.
Any messages, any photos.
He said you were suspicious and he needed to know there was nothing for you to find." Her voice tightened.
"That's when I decided to call you instead."
I stood up.
Looked at myself in the mirror.
"Do you still have them?" I asked.
"The messages."
May you like
"Yes," she said.
"I kept everything."
