Chapter 4: Ask Your Husband
The room didn't react.
It just stopped.
Daniel's hand, still half-extended toward where my arm had been, dropped to his side.
"Mom." His voice came out wrong.
Too quiet.
Too fast.
"She deserves to know," Patricia said.
She had found her footing now.
I could see it — the slight lift of her chin, the way her shoulders settled back.
She had been holding this.
She had been waiting for a moment to use it.
"If she's going to sit here and record me like a criminal, she deserves to know what kind of marriage she's actually in."
"Don't," Daniel said.
"Daniel." I looked at him.
"What is she talking about?"
He didn't answer.
"Daniel."
"It's nothing.
She's deflecting.
Don't let her—"
"He's been talking to someone," Patricia said.
"For eight months.
I told him to end it.
He said he did.
I don't know if that's true."
The word *someone* landed like a stone dropped into still water.
I felt the ripple move through me before I fully understood what she'd said.
"You knew," I said.
Not to Patricia.
To Daniel.
He sat down.
He hadn't been sitting before.
Now he sat down like something had left his legs.
"I ended it," he said.
"It's over.
It has been for months."
"You knew," I said again.
"And you said nothing."
"I was going to tell you.
I was trying to find the right—"
"Eight months."
Courtney stood up.
"I'm going to check on Dad and Mia."
Nobody stopped her.
She was gone before her chair finished moving.
I looked at Patricia.
She was watching me with an expression I had seen before but never understood until this moment.
It wasn't cruelty.
It was relief.
She had been carrying this too, and now she had set it down — on me.
"You told him to end it," I said to her.
"You knew for eight months and you protected him."
"I protected this family."
"Mia is this family."
She didn't answer that.
"You left my daughter in a parking garage," I said.
"And the whole time, you were sitting on this.
Why?
To use it?
To save it for a moment exactly like this one?"
"I told him to fix it himself."
"But he didn't.
And now you're using it to change the subject."
"I'm not changing anything.
You wanted honesty.
There it is."
I picked up my phone.
The recording was still going.
I pressed stop, not because I was done, but because what came next was not for anyone else.
I looked at Daniel.
"Is there anything else?" I asked.
"Anything at all that I don't know?"
He looked at the table.
Then at me.
"Her name was Jess.
She was someone from work.
It's been over since February."
"February," I said.
"Yes."
"Mia's birthday is in February."
He closed his eyes.
I stood up.
I didn't raise my voice.
I didn't knock anything over.
I picked up my bag, I picked up Daniel's jacket — the one still wrapped around the memory of my daughter's cold shoulders — and I walked toward the restaurant entrance.
Patricia called after me.
"Running away doesn't solve anything, Lauren."
I didn't turn around.
But I heard Robert's voice from near the door, low and even.
"Patricia.
May you like
Stop."
And for the second time that night, she did.
