A wife’s young son accidentally revealed that a mysterious woman had been visiting their bedroom while she was at work. Convinced her husband was hiding an affair, she set out to uncover the truth. What did she discover?
The house was still when I stood at the foot of our bed, folding a pile of Leo’s tiny T-shirts. On the dresser, my mother’s silk scarf lay coiled like a sleeping cat, still faintly holding the scent of her jasmine perfume three months after we buried her.
I lifted it to my face and breathed in, quick, before I could stop myself.
“Mommy, are you crying again?”
Leo stood in the doorway in mismatched socks, one blue, one striped, holding a juice box like a trophy.
“No, baby. Just smelling Grandma.”
“Grandma smells like flowers.”
“She does.”
He padded in and climbed onto the bed, and I noticed it again. A smudge of silver paint on the side of his thumb, dried and flaking, and another streak crusted along his elbow that I could have sworn wasn’t there when I’d bathed him last night.
“Leo, what is this?”
“Paint.”
“I can see it’s paint. From where?”
“Art class,” Mark called from the hallway, appearing behind him with a coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. “The teacher’s been doing a whole galaxy unit this week. Stars, planets, the works.”
He gave me that smile. Small, private, the corners of his mouth tucked in as if he was holding something he did not want to spill.
“It looks stubborn. Doesn’t it wash off?”
“You know how he is in the tub. Splashes everywhere except on himself.”
“I did!” Leo shouted, then bounced off the bed and ran for the stairs.
Mark leaned in and kissed my forehead, quick, warm.
“You look tired, Ket.”
“I’m fine.”
“Our anniversary is in three days. Ten years. Are we doing something or are you going to keep pretending you forgot?”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good.”
He glanced at his phone again, that same soft smile, and slipped it into his back pocket before I could see the screen.
“I have to run out for an hour,” he said. “Errand.”
“On a Wednesday morning? Don’t you have work?”
“Boring one. Promise.”
I watched him go and told myself I was being ridiculous.
Grief did strange things to a person. My mother used to say suspicion was just love with nowhere to land, and lately my love had nowhere at all.
That evening, I went to put away a stack of towels in the guest room, but the door wouldn’t open.
“Mark?” I called. “Why is the guest room locked?”
“Is it?” he called back from downstairs. “Must’ve stuck. I’ll take a look in a minute.”
“Do you have the key?”
“Somewhere,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
I stood there with my hand on the knob for a long moment. Then I walked away, because that was what a reasonable wife did. That was what a woman who trusted her husband did.
By the next afternoon, I had almost convinced myself.
“Milk, apples, bread, and something for dinner,” I told Leo as I buckled him into the cart at the grocery store. “Help Mommy remember.”
“Milk, apples, bread,” he sang, swinging his legs.
“Good boy.”
The store hummed with its ordinary afternoon sounds. Squeaking wheels, a baby fussing two aisles over, the tinny pop song leaking from the speakers overhead.
I picked out a carton of milk, tucked it into the shopping cart, and joined the checkout line.
For the first time in weeks, I felt something loosen in my chest. Almost like calm. Almost like normal.
Leo sat in the shopping cart seat, swinging his legs and humming to himself while I glanced at my watch, wondering what to cook for our anniversary.
Then, out of nowhere, he went completely still.
He tugged hard on my sleeve.
“Mommy. Mommy, look.”
The cashier’s scanner beeped somewhere behind me, but the sound felt far away, like it belonged to another woman’s afternoon.
Leo was still pulling at my sleeve, pointing toward the bakery display.
“I see her, sweetheart,” I whispered. “Keep your voice down.”
“But that’s her,” he said, his tiny finger still pointing. “That’s the lady who comes to our house when you’re at work! She plays in the room upstairs.”
My hand closed around the milk carton so tight I felt the cardboard buckle.
I set it down on the belt before I crushed it entirely.
The woman by the bakery had not turned yet.
She was young. Maybe 30.
She was wearing a short green dress, with her dark hair pulled up loose, and a canvas tote slung over one shoulder.
I could not see her face. I did not know if I wanted to.
“Leo, honey,” I said, kneeling a little so my eyes were closer to his. “What do you mean, plays?”
“Games,” he said, matter-of-fact, swinging his legs. “But Daddy said it’s a secret. So I’m not telling.”
“You just told me.”
His mouth opened. Then closed. His eyes went wide with the specific panic of a five-year-old realizing he has broken a rule.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered.
Ten years. Ten years of Sunday mornings and burnt pancakes and Mark rubbing my back when I could not sleep after the funeral.
Ten years, and my son was telling me a woman came to my house while I worked.
The cashier said something.
I did not hear it.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, your total. Forty-two eighteen.”
I fumbled my card. Dropped it. Picked it up. Tapped it against the reader with a hand that would not stop shaking.
The machine chirped its small approval.
The cashier bagged the milk, the bread, the box of cereal, and set them back into the cart without looking at me.
