Chapter 6: The Things That Come Out in Daylight
Three days passed.
Mark slept in the guest room.
He made the kids' lunches in the morning without being asked.
He picked Lily up from school on Tuesday when I had a dentist appointment.
He didn't push.
He didn't plead.
He just moved quietly through the house like a man trying to take up less space.
On Wednesday morning I found him sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a legal pad beside it.
"What's that?" I asked.
He turned the pad toward me.
It was a list.
Couples therapists.
Names, phone numbers, a few notes about availability.
"I called our insurance," he said.
"Most of these are covered.
I thought — if you want — we could look through them together.
Or you can pick.
Whatever you're comfortable with."
I looked at the list.
Eight names.
He'd written their specialties next to each one.
"You did this this morning?"
"I did it Monday," he said.
"I didn't know when to show you."
I sat down.
Pulled the pad toward me.
Read through the names.
"This one," I said, pointing to the fourth name.
"She has evening slots.
The kids would be in bed."
"I'll call today."
I pushed the pad back and poured my coffee.
"Mark," I said.
"I need to ask you something and I need you to answer me honestly."
"Okay."
"Is there anything else I don't know?
Anything at all.
Because if I find out later that there was more — I won't recover from that.
I need to know now, while I'm still deciding."
He held my gaze.
"No.
There's nothing else."
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
I studied him.
Six years of marriage.
I knew his face the way you know a road you've driven a thousand times — every curve, every rough patch, every place where the light falls differently in the morning.
He wasn't lying.
That didn't make it simple.
But it was something.
"Okay," I said.
I took my coffee to the living room.
Sat in the armchair by the window.
Outside, the neighbor's dog was barking at something in the bushes.
Normal Tuesday sounds.
Normal street.
My phone buzzed.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*Hi Sarah.
My name is Cara.
I think we need to talk.*
I stared at the screen.
Then I set my coffee down very carefully on the side table, stood up, and walked back to the kitchen.
Mark was still at the table, his phone to his ear, already calling the therapist.
He looked up when I came in.
Read my face.
"What's wrong?"
I turned my phone around and showed him the screen.
His face went through several things at once.
Shock.
Then something that looked like fear.
"She has your number," I said.
"How does she have my number, Mark?"
He lowered his phone slowly.
"I don't know," he said.
"That's not good enough."
"Sarah, I swear to you, I never gave her your number."
"Then how?"
He stood up.
Took his own phone and opened it.
Scrolled.
His jaw tightened.
"She went through my contacts," he said.
"When she was — we were together in February.
She must have—" He stopped.
"I didn't know she did that."
I looked at the text again.
*I think we need to talk.*
"What does she want?" I said.
"What could she possibly want from me?"
Mark's hand came down flat on the table.
"Don't respond," he said.
"Please.
Let me handle this."
"Handle it how?"
"I'll call her.
I'll tell her to leave you alone.
This ends now."
"You said it ended in February."
"It did."
"And then it didn't."
He looked at me.
The fear was still there.
But underneath it, something else.
Shame.
Real shame.
The kind that doesn't perform itself.
"I know," he said.
"I know I have no right to ask you to trust me right now.
But I'm asking anyway.
Don't respond to her.
Give me one hour."
I looked at the text.
At his face.
At the legal pad with the therapist's name circled in pen.
"One hour," I said.
I walked back to the living room.
Sat down.
Picked up my coffee.
It had gone cold.
Forty minutes later, Mark appeared in the doorway.
"It's done," he said.
"I told her not to contact you again.
I told her it was over and it had been over and she needed to stop."
"What did she say?"
He leaned against the doorframe.
May you like
"She said she was pregnant."
The room went very quiet.
