My Husband Pretended He Forgot Me for His Ex-Wife

Catalina found me in the library again. She had a way of appearing in doorways like she'd been invited, like the whole house had rearranged itself around her and I was the one trespassing.

She sat down without asking, folded her hands in her lap, and gave me that look — the one she'd perfected over three months, soft and sorry and sharp underneath.

"I've been thinking," she said. Quiet. Reluctant. Like the words cost her something. "You deserve to know the truth. I mean really know it, not just — not just what you've been telling yourself to get through the day."

I closed my book. I didn't mark the page.

"If you want to understand who Kaiser's heart belongs to," she said, leaning forward just a fraction, "you should check his home office computer. The password isn't hard to guess. Not if you know him at all."

She watched my face. Waited for the flinch, the crack, the moment I'd break open in front of her so she could finally see the damage up close.

I looked at her for a long, still second. Then I stood, picked up my book, and walked past her without a word.

Behind me, I heard her exhale — soft, satisfied, like she'd just closed a deal.

I waited until after dinner. Until the penthouse went quiet and the master bedroom door clicked shut and the city outside dimmed to its nighttime hum. Then I walked down the hall to the office and closed the door behind me.

The laptop sat on the desk, sleek and black, the screensaver cycling through photos I'd never seen before. Catalina laughing on a beach somewhere. Catalina in a restaurant, candlelight on her face. I touched the trackpad and the login screen appeared.

I typed our wedding anniversary. June eighteenth.

Incorrect password.

I sat back in the chair. My hands were steady. I wasn't surprised. Not really.

I thought about the flowers. The card. *To my Cat — Always yours, K.* I thought about the way Kaiser's thumb had found the hidden panel behind the curtain without looking. I thought about Reyes, and the cabinet, and the phone call through the door.

Then I typed in a date I had no reason to remember. October ninth. The date I'd seen once, years ago, on a piece of mail that came to the house by mistake — an anniversary card addressed to Kaiser Jenkins and Catalina Flores, postmarked the year before I ever met him.

The screen unlocked.

I didn't move for a moment. Just sat there, staring at the desktop, at the neat rows of folders labeled by year, by name, by transaction type. Everything organized. Everything accounted for. A man who'd lost seven years of memory didn't keep files like this.

I opened the first folder.

Bank transfers. Monthly. Fifty thousand, sixty thousand, sometimes more. Years of them, going back to before our wedding, continuing through it, never stopping. Rent payments for an apartment in the West Village. A car lease. Credit card bills I'd never seen.

I opened the next folder.

Emails. Hundreds of them. *I miss you. I can't stop thinking about last weekend. You're the only person who's ever really known me.* Written in a voice I'd never heard him use, tender and unguarded and alive in a way he'd never once been with me. I scrolled through dates. Paris, two years ago — the weekend he told me he had an investor retreat in Boston. Miami, eighteen months ago — a conference in Chicago, he'd said. The Maldives, last winter — London, he'd told me. London.

I kept scrolling.

Then I found the thread from four years ago. The subject line was blank. The date was March seventh. The night my father died.

I opened it.

*Cat, I'm on my way. Don't do anything until I get there. I'm booking the next flight out.*

*I'm at LAX. Checked into the Mondrian. Room 804. Where are you?*

*You're okay. I'm here. You're going to be okay.*

I scrolled down. There were three days of messages. Room service orders. A photo of a sunset through a hotel window. *Thank you for coming. I don't know what I would have done without you.*

I had called him that night. I had called him sobbing, barely able to get the words out, and he had told me he was in London. That he couldn't get a flight back in time. That he was so, so sorry.

I had buried my father alone.

I read the thread again. Then I read it a third time, slower, making sure I understood every word, every date, every lie.

Then I closed the laptop.

I sat in the dark office for a long time, hands folded in my lap, breathing in and out, waiting for something to break inside me.

Nothing broke.

I stood up, walked out of the office, and went back to the guest room. I didn't pack. I didn't cry. I just lay down on the narrow bed fully dressed and stared at the ceiling until the gray light came through the window.

I was finished.