CHEATING HUSBAND’S SICK LOVE

I go home. I pick up Lucky. I get in the car.

Lucky is our golden retriever. He's three. He's spoiled and he knows it. He sits in the passenger seat like a person and sticks his nose out the crack in the window and I love him more than most humans.

I drive. I don't know where I'm going. I end up parked outside the office. I've been sitting here for forty minutes and I feel genuinely crazy.

Then I see her.

Vanessa. Coming out of the parking garage in a white SUV.

I follow her. I know. I know how this looks. But my hands are already doing it and my brain hasn't caught up yet.

She lives about ten minutes away. Nice neighborhood. Quiet streets. Big trees. I park half a block back and watch her go inside.

I sit there.

Lucky looks at me.

"Don't judge me," I tell him.

Twenty minutes pass. Nothing happens. See? Nothing. I'm losing my mind for nothing.

I'm about to leave when Nathan's car turns onto the street.

His black Mercedes. His plates.

I press my hand flat against my sternum. My heart is going insane underneath it.

He parks in front of her house.

I call him.

He picks up on the second ring. "Mia Bear. What's up?"

"Hey." My voice sounds normal. I don't know how. "Where are you?"

"Just leaving the office. Quick stop at Vanessa's — she's got a contract file I need for the Tokyo meeting tomorrow. You know how it is."

"Yeah." I watch his car, parked right there, fifteen feet in front of me. "Sure. Don't be too long."

"Twenty minutes max. Love you."

He hangs up.

He stays thirty-five minutes. When his car finally pulls out, I'm still sitting there with my hand on my chest.

Five minutes later, Vanessa comes out in workout clothes. She stretches on her front step, puts her earbuds in, and goes for a jog.

Okay. Fine. He picked up a file. She went for a run. Normal things. Normal Tuesday evening.

I'm literally about to leave.

And then Lucky launches himself out the cracked window.

"LUCKY—"

He bolts across the street, hits Vanessa's lawn, squats, and pees.

I'm out of the car in two seconds, mortified, reaching for him. Then I stop.

Lucky pees at home. He pees at our place in the Hamptons. He pees in Nathan's parking spot at the office sometimes, which the parking attendant has given up trying to stop.

Our dog trainer once told us, laughing, that Lucky seems to think he and Nathan are competing for territory. That he marks everywhere Nathan has claimed.

Lucky is peeing on Vanessa Cole's front lawn.

The world goes very quiet.

I pick him up. I carry him to the car.

I sit there for a long time.

Then, slowly, I walk back across the street. Up the front path. To her door.

She has a keypad lock.

I don't know why I try it.

I type in Lucky's birthday. Same code I use for my own front door.

The light turns green.

The door opens.

* * *