My Husband Called Me Paranoid While Begging His Mistress

The apartment was quiet the way only a tired home can be. The dishwasher hummed low. The hallway nightlight glowed pink through Norah's cracked bedroom door. I stood at the kitchen island, folding a stack of Jared's undershirts into neat white squares, and listened to the water running behind the bathroom wall.

Six years of marriage sounds like this. Water. A dishwasher. A child breathing in another room.

Jared's phone sat face-up on the marble counter, right next to his wedding band. He always took it off before he showered. He said the steam would ruin it. I used to think that was sweet.

The screen lit up.

I didn't mean to look. My eyes just went there, the way they always do when something moves in a still room.

**Amoura Greene.**

My hands kept folding. Fold. Smooth. Stack. My fingers knew the motion better than my brain did.

*I need to see you one last time. Before it's final. Please. You owe me that.*

I read it twice. Then a third time, slower, like maybe I was misreading the English. *You owe me that.* Three years. It had been three years since I found the hotel receipt in his coat pocket. Three years since he'd knelt on our bedroom floor and cried and promised. Three years since I chose to stay, because Norah was four months old and I couldn't feed her and pack a suitcase at the same time.

I set the phone down carefully. Screen up. Exactly where he'd left it. Exactly the angle.

Then I finished folding the laundry.

The last shirt was one of his old ones, soft at the collar. I pressed it flat against the counter with both palms and held it there. My chest felt strange. Not broken. Just… hollowed out, like someone had scooped something quietly from behind my ribs and I hadn't noticed until now.

The water shut off.

I carried the laundry basket to our bedroom and set it at the foot of the bed. I sat on the edge of the mattress and waited.

He came out in gray sweatpants, toweling his hair, smelling like the eucalyptus soap I bought him at Whole Foods. He saw me sitting there and smiled, easy, the way a man smiles at his own life.

"You okay?"

"Amoura texted you."

He didn't flinch. That was the part that got me. A flinch would have meant something. Instead, his face just… settled. Like he'd been rehearsing this in the shower.

"Yeah?" He walked past me to the dresser. "What'd it say?"

"Read it yourself."

He padded out to the kitchen. I heard the phone unlock. I counted his breaths from the bedroom. One. Two. Three.

He came back holding it loose in his hand, like it was a receipt for takeout.

"Esme." His voice dropped into that gentle register he used when he thought I was being difficult. "She's getting married Saturday. In the Hamptons. She reached out to say goodbye. I haven't responded. I'm not going to respond."

"She said you *owe* her."

"People say dramatic things when they're getting married." He almost laughed. Almost. "Come on. We've been over this. I chose this family. I chose you and Norah. I've been choosing you for three years."

"Chose," I repeated. The word tasted strange.

"Baby." He sat down beside me. The mattress dipped. He put a warm hand on my knee, and I watched it there like it belonged to someone else. "You're spiraling again. It's late. Norah's asleep. Let's not do this tonight."

"I'm not spiraling."

"You get like this when you're tired. You know you do." He kissed my temple, right where my hair was starting to gray at twenty-nine. "You're being paranoid. Okay? I promise. I love you. Come to bed."

He reached over and clicked off the lamp.

Just like that. Room dark. Conversation closed. He rolled onto his side, tucked one arm under his pillow, and within four minutes his breathing evened out.

I sat in the dark on the edge of our bed for a long time.

I thought about the word *paranoid*. How light it was in his mouth. How many times he'd handed it to me over the years, small and polished, like a pebble he'd been carrying in his pocket just for me. *You're paranoid, Esme. You're tired, Esme. You're not yourself since the baby.*

I thought about Norah, sleeping down the hall with her stuffed rabbit tucked under her chin.

I thought about the drawer in his study. The one he kept locked. The one he told me held old tax documents.

My sleeve had ridden up. In the dark, I could just make out the pale ladder of thin white lines along the inside of my left wrist. I pulled the cuff back down slowly, over the bone, past the heel of my palm.

Something shifted beneath my ribs. Not loud. Not sharp. Just a small, quiet click, like a lock finally giving.

I got up. I walked to the kitchen. I poured a glass of water I didn't drink and stood at the window looking out over the East River, at the lights on the bridge, at a city that had forgotten I used to belong to it.

Tomorrow, I thought, he goes to work at eight. Norah has preschool at nine.

I have the apartment to myself from nine to three.

I took a sip of the water. It was very cold. My hand didn't shake at all.