My Husband Kissed His Mistress While I Was Pregnant

The appointment was at nine.

Landon was up before me, already dressed, already making the kind of small talk that had become its own language between us — a language I had learned to speak fluently while feeling nothing. He handed me a glass of water and my prenatal vitamins, and I took them from his hand and swallowed them without looking at the mole.

I had gotten very good at not looking at the mole.

In the car, he kept one hand on the wheel and one on my knee. The morning was gray and soft, the kind of October light that makes everything look like a memory before it's finished happening. He talked about the nursery. He had been talking about the nursery for three days, ever since the paint swatches, ever since Honey Drop.

'I was thinking we do the crib on the north wall,' he said. 'Better light in the morning. Kids need good light.'

'Sure,' I said.

'And I found this mobile — little wooden birds, hand-painted. Very simple. You'd love it.'

'Sounds nice.'

He squeezed my knee. I watched the city move past the window.

The hospital parking lot was half-full. He pulled into a spot near the entrance and cut the engine, and for a moment we just sat there, the car ticking as it cooled. I had my bag on my lap. Inside it: the ultrasound referral, my insurance card, the small notebook where I had been writing down questions for the technician. Normal things. The things a normal woman carries to a normal appointment.

Then his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen. Just a glance — half a second, maybe less. But I had spent weeks learning to read him the way you learn to read weather, and I saw it. The slight tightening around his eyes. The almost imperceptible pause before he answered.

'Hey.' His voice shifted registers. Casual, but careful. 'What's — '

The sound that came through the phone was immediate and unmistakable. A woman's voice, high and fractured, the specific pitch of someone performing hysteria or genuinely inside it. I could not make out the words. I did not need to.

Landon turned slightly away from me. His free hand came up to press against his mouth.

'Okay,' he said. 'Okay, slow down. Are you — where are you right now?'

I looked straight ahead through the windshield. A couple was walking toward the entrance, the woman's belly round under her coat, the man's hand at the small of her back. He was saying something that made her laugh.

'I have to go.' Landon lowered the phone. When he turned back to me, his face had already arranged itself into something that looked like regret. It was a good performance. It had always been a good performance. 'Babe, I'm so sorry. There's a server situation — the whole system is down, the team is completely —'

'It's fine,' I said.

'I'll be back before they even call your name. It's probably nothing, I just need to —'

'Landon.' I opened the car door. 'It's fine.'

He didn't park. He pulled up to the entrance, and I got out, and I did not wait to see if he would say anything else. The automatic doors slid open in front of me. Behind me, I heard his car pull away.

I did not turn around.

---

The waiting room was warm and smelled like recycled air and hand sanitizer. Chairs lined the walls in rows of muted blue. A television in the corner played a morning show with the sound off, the hosts laughing at something I couldn't hear.

I found a seat near the window and set my bag on my lap and looked at my hands.

Across the aisle, a woman was leaning into her husband's shoulder, her eyes closed, his arm around her. He was scrolling his phone with his free hand, but every few seconds he would press his lips to the top of her head without looking up. Like breathing. Like something he did without thinking.

I looked away.

A young couple sat two seats down, the woman showing the man something on her phone — ultrasound photos from a previous appointment, I guessed, from the way he leaned in and touched the screen with one careful finger. He said something quiet. She covered her mouth with her hand and laughed.

I opened my notebook and looked at my questions.

*Is the placenta position normal? What is the estimated weight? Can we confirm the heart chambers?*

Normal questions. The questions of a woman who had prepared.

'Eleanor Pierce?'

The nurse was young, with kind eyes and a clipboard. She looked past me toward the door, the automatic scan for the second person who was supposed to be there.

'That's me,' I said, and stood.

---

The room was dim, the way those rooms always are. A screen on the wall. A table with a strip of paper across it, already crinkling at the edges. The technician was a woman in her forties with steady hands and a voice that had clearly spent years calibrating itself to this specific frequency of quiet.

I lay back. The gel was cold. I had known it would be cold and it still surprised me.

The image appeared on the screen — that gray, shifting landscape of sound and shadow that I had been trying to understand since the first appointment. And then, in the center of it, a pulse. Small and fast and absolutely certain of itself.

My daughter's heartbeat.

I stared at it. I did not blink.

'Everything looks great,' the technician said, moving the wand in slow, deliberate arcs. 'Good position. Strong heartbeat. She's measuring right on track.' She paused. 'Is dad — is he running late?'

'He had an emergency,' I said.

My voice did not break. I had not expected it to.

She printed the images without comment and handed them to me in a small envelope. I sat up slowly, wiped the gel from my skin, and looked at the photo. My daughter's profile. The curve of her nose. Her hands folded near her face, the way babies do, as if they are already thinking.

I put the photo in my bag, next to the notebook, next to the insurance card.

I walked out into the gray morning alone.

---

I sat in the waiting room for another hour. I don't know why. I told myself I was waiting for the paperwork. Maybe I was. Maybe I just needed to sit somewhere that wasn't home.

The couple with the ultrasound photos left together, his hand on her back. The woman who had been sleeping on her husband's shoulder woke up when her name was called, and he stood with her, and they walked in together.

I watched the door.

My phone buzzed at eleven-fourteen.

*So sorry babe. Server crisis worse than expected. How did it go? Is she healthy?*

I read it twice. I thought about the sound of Karsyn's voice through the phone. I thought about the way his face had arranged itself into regret. I thought about my daughter's heartbeat on that screen, steady and indifferent to all of it, just alive, just insisting on being alive.

I typed: *She's perfect. Everything's fine.*

I sent it.

Then I opened my contacts. I found the name I had been looking at for weeks, the name I had been circling the way you circle a door you know you have to walk through.

Marcus Webb.

I typed: *I'm ready. Draw up the papers.*

I pressed send.

Outside, the October light had gone flat and white. I stood up, picked up my bag, and walked through the automatic doors into the cold.