My Husband Cheated With My Sister, So I Married His Double

"Did you hear that?"

Mark's voice came through the gap. Flat. Alert.

I pulled my hand off the doorframe and stepped back. One step. Two. The floorboard by the linen closet groaned under me, and I froze.

"It's an old house," Selina purred. "It talks. Come back here."

"Amy—"

"Is asleep. You said so yourself."

A pause. Then the bedsprings creaked, and she laughed again.

I didn't run. I didn't scream. I didn't kick the door open and drag her out by the hair I used to braid for her before school.

I walked to the staircase and sat down on the third step.

The wood was so cold it burned through my robe. I wrapped my arms around my knees and pressed my forehead against them. The bracelet he'd given me at dinner dug into my skin.

*Seven years and I'd marry you seven more times.*

I almost laughed again.

---

The first time I saw Mark Delaney, he was standing in front of my worst painting.

It was my first real show. A tiny gallery downtown. I was twenty-four, broke, and wearing a dress I'd borrowed from my roommate.

"This one's sad," he said. He didn't even turn around.

"It's supposed to be hopeful," I told him.

He looked at me then. Gray suit. Gray eyes. A watch that cost more than my car.

"Then you painted it wrong." He smiled. "Or I'm looking at it wrong. Want to explain it to me over dinner?"

"I don't date strangers who insult my work."

"Mark." He held out his hand. "Now I'm not a stranger."

He bought the painting that night. He hung it in his office, right behind his desk.

"So I see you every time I look up," he said.

I believed him. God help me, I believed every word.

---

Eight months later, I couldn't hold a pencil.

It started with numbness in my fingers. Then the fevers. Then the hospital, the tubes, the doctors talking in low voices outside my door.

"Autoimmune," one of them said. "Aggressive. We need to start treatment now."

My hands shook so badly I couldn't sign the consent forms. Mark signed them for me.

He stayed every night. Slept in that awful plastic chair. Brought me lemon ice when I couldn't keep food down.

On the worst night, the one where my mother cried in the hallway, he took my hand between both of his.

"Marry me, Amy."

I thought I was hallucinating. "Mark, look at me. I might not even—"

"Don't." His voice cracked. "Don't say it."

"I might never paint again."

"Then I'll be your hands." He kissed my knuckles, one by one. "I'll take care of you for the rest of my life. Just say yes."

I sobbed so hard the nurse came running.

"Yes," I choked out. "Yes."

---

The doctors were honest about what the treatments might cost me.

"Pregnancy may be difficult," one told us. "Maybe impossible."

I couldn't look at Mark. I stared at the blanket instead.

He squeezed my fingers. "I don't care about that."

"You will," I whispered. "Someday you'll want kids, and I won't be able to—"

"Hey." He tipped my chin up. "You're enough. You've always been enough."

Seven years, and he never asked again. Never pushed. Never sighed when my friends announced their babies.

I thought that was love.

On the stairs, I finally understood. He never pushed because he never wanted anything from me except what I owned.

---

The change came so slowly that I didn't notice it at first.

It started after Selina moved back to the city. Sunday dinners at our place. Movie nights. Mark teaching her how to change a tire.

"He's like the big brother I never had," she told me, beaming.

Then my birthday came. Mark worked late. No card. No call.

"Babe, I'm so sorry," he said the next morning. "Quarter-end. It completely slipped my mind."

Two weeks later, Selina mentioned at brunch that she'd always wanted to see the cherry blossoms in Kyoto. She said it once. Offhand. Stirring her mimosa.

That winter, a travel brochure appeared on our kitchen counter. Kyoto. Spring.

"For the three of us," Mark said. "Family trip."

I smiled and said it was sweet.

Then there was the night Selina knocked a full glass of red wine onto our white couch.

"Oh my God." She covered her mouth. "Oh my God, Amy, I'm so stupid—"

I opened my mouth, but Mark was already on his knees with a towel. He was *laughing*. Soft and fond.

"You're a disaster, you know that?" he said to her.

"I know." She giggled through fake tears. "I'm hopeless."

"Completely hopeless."

He hadn't laughed like that with me in years. He hadn't hugged me without a reason in months.

My best friend Dana called it out first. "Amy, the way he looks at her is weird."

"She's my *sister*."

"I'm just saying—"

"You don't know Selina like I do. She's fragile. Mark's just protective."

Dana stopped bringing it up after that.

I told myself I was too sensitive. Too insecure. Too sick for too long to know what normal looked like.

On the stairs, with my sister's laughter leaking through the wall, I finally stopped making excuses.

He hadn't stopped loving me.

He'd never started.

Every soft word, every forehead kiss, every *you're enough* had been part of the act. And I'd been the only one in the audience who didn't know it was a show.

---

I stayed on that step until the sky outside the window turned the color of dishwater.

Around five, I heard the guest room door. Footsteps. Our bedroom door closing softly.

He'd gone back to our bed so he'd be there when I woke up.

My stomach rolled. I pressed my hand against my mouth until it passed.

Then I stood up.

The candles from last night had burned down to puddles on the dining table. The Wellington plates were still there, crusted and cold. I slid the wedding ring off my finger. It came off easily. It always had been a little too big.

*We'll get it resized,* he'd said. Seven years ago.

I set it down in the center of the table, right next to his empty wine glass.

Then I went to the studio.

My brushes were where I'd left them. Half of them were stiff and dry. I hadn't painted in almost a year. I rolled them in cloth anyway. Packed my tubes of paint, my sketchbooks, the small easel my grandmother bought me when I was nine.

Passport. Birth certificate. The deed folder from the safe in the hall closet. The company's incorporation papers.

My hands didn't shake once.

I wasn't going to fight. I wasn't going to beg. I just wanted to breathe air he hadn't touched.

I zipped the last bag and reached for my keys.

My phone buzzed in my robe pocket.

For one sick second I thought it was him. *Where are you, sweetheart?*

It wasn't.

**St. Agnes Medical Center — Lab Results Available.**

I'd almost forgotten. The bloodwork from last week, for the fatigue and the nausea I'd blamed on stress.

I tapped it open.

I read it once. Then again. Then a third time, because the words wouldn't stay still on the screen.

**hCG: Positive. Estimated gestation: 6 weeks.**

The keys slipped out of my hand and hit the floor.

Upstairs, our bedroom door opened.

"Amy?" Mark called, his voice warm and sleepy. "Sweetheart, why are you up so early?"