After His Mistress Poisoned My Mother, He Still Chose Her

Melina came down for breakfast in one of my old cardigans.

I don't know how she found it. It had been folded in the hall closet for two years, the sleeves stretched out from a winter I barely remembered. She wore it like a child wears a stranger's coat, the cuffs swallowing her hands. She thanked me for the toast in a voice so soft I almost asked her to repeat it.

"Sorry," she whispered when the kettle whistled. She flinched. Actually flinched. Her shoulders pulled up to her ears, and she stared at the floor like she'd done something wrong.

Cillian was at the table with his laptop. He looked up. His face did the thing I had learned to recognize over three years—the softening around the eyes, the slight parting of the lips. Like a man watching a hurt animal he'd promised to feed.

"It's just the kettle," he said. Gently. The way he used to say my name.

She nodded. Made herself smaller in the doorway. Slid past the counter without touching it. Sat across from him with her hands in her lap.

I poured the tea I wasn't going to drink.

I watched him watch her. I watched the way his hand moved toward hers and stopped, the way he caught himself, the way he didn't catch himself enough. I watched her glance up at him through her lashes and then away, fast, like she was ashamed of needing anything.

I had already called Diane Lau. The consultation was on Thursday. I held that fact in my chest the way I used to hold my breath underwater as a kid—steady, private, mine.

"Esme," Cillian said. "You okay?"

"I'm fine." I set the mug down. "I have errands."

He didn't ask what kind.

***

Diane Lau's office was on the thirty-fourth floor, all glass and gray carpet and a view of a city that didn't care about any of this. She was younger than her photo. She had a pen behind her ear and another one in her hand, and she didn't smile when she shook mine.

"Tell me from the beginning," she said.

I did.

I'd brought a folder. Inside were screenshots of texts I wasn't supposed to have seen. Hotel receipts from three years ago. A photo of the wedding invitation Melina had sent, the handwriting looped and feminine. Calendar entries. The night of our anniversary, time-stamped. The night before that. The night before that.

Diane went through them page by page. Her face didn't move.

"How long have you been keeping this?" she asked.

"A while."

"Months?"

"Years."

She looked up then. Just for a second. Something passed behind her eyes—not pity, which I would have hated, but a kind of recognition. Like she'd seen this folder before, in different handwriting, from different women.

"We can expedite," she said. "Given the pattern. Given the documentation."

"How fast?"

"Faster than he'll be ready for."

I signed the retainer. My hand was steady. The pen was heavier than I expected.

In the elevator down, I called the realtor.

"I want to list," I said.

"The brownstone? Are you sure? The market—"

"I'm sure."

"What price point?"

I looked at my reflection in the elevator wall. The red lipstick from this morning had faded to a faint stain. My eyes looked the same as they always did. That was the strange part. None of this showed.

"Whatever moves it fast," I said.

***

Four days after she arrived, I was in the pantry.

It was early afternoon. The light through the window over the sink was that thin spring gold, the kind that made the kitchen look like a magazine. I was reaching for a can of tomatoes on the second shelf. The pantry door was open behind me. I heard her footsteps on the tile—light, careful, the way she always walked now, like the floor might break.

Then the world moved.

She hit me shoulder first. Hard. Harder than a woman her size should have been able to. My shoulder slammed into the doorframe and bounced, and the side of my face followed, the cheekbone catching the wood with a sound I felt more than heard. White flashed behind my eyes. The can hit the floor and rolled.

When I turned, she was already at the counter.

Her back was to me. Her hand was steady on the cabinet handle. She opened it, looked inside, closed it. Opened another.

"Esme," she said, without turning. "Do you have olive oil?"

Her voice was even. Pleasant. The voice of a houseguest making lunch.

I stood in the pantry doorway with my hand on the frame to keep myself upright. I lifted my other hand to my cheek. The skin was already hot. I could feel the shape of the bruise beginning to gather under my fingertips, blooming the way ink blooms in water.

She turned then. Slowly. Her face was arranged into a small, polite question.

We looked at each other.

I watched her eyes flick to my cheek. I watched her note it. I watched the corner of her mouth—just the corner, just for a fraction of a second—do something that wasn't a smile and wasn't not a smile.

Then her face was empty again. Soft. Concerned.

"Are you okay?" she said. "You look pale."

I thought about a lot of things in that second. I thought about the can of tomatoes still rolling somewhere behind me. I thought about the pen in Diane Lau's hand. I thought about my mother in the hospital, and the way she'd told me last week that the flowers I brought were too cheerful for that room, and how she'd laughed.

I thought about Thursday.

I stepped past Melina. My shoulder ached. My face was singing. I reached up to the shelf above the stove and took down the green bottle of olive oil, the good one, the one Cillian had brought back from a trip to Italy three years ago. I held it out to her.

She took it with both hands. Like a gift.

"Thank you," she said. Almost a whisper. "You're so kind to me."

I didn't answer.

I walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs, slowly, one hand on the banister. In our bathroom, I closed the door and locked it. I turned on the cold tap. I looked in the mirror.

The bruise was already there—a soft red shadow on my cheekbone, the size of a thumbprint, blooming toward my jaw. By morning it would be purple. By the day after, yellow at the edges.

I ran a washcloth under the cold water and pressed it to my face.

I did not cry.

I counted the days until Thursday.

Four.