Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Wouldn't Run
Rebecca didn't run.
That's the thing I keep coming back to when I tell this story.
Most people, when they get caught doing something shameful, they bolt.
They grab their coat and they mumble apologies and they disappear.
Rebecca walked into my living room, sat down on the edge of my couch, and crossed her legs like she was waiting for a bus.
Daniel stood by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor.
I stayed standing.
"So," I said.
"Who are you?"
"Rebecca Hale," she said.
"I work with Daniel."
"Work with him how?"
"I'm a designer.
We were on the same project for a while."
"For a while," I repeated.
She nodded.
"How long?"
She looked at Daniel.
He didn't look back.
"A few months," she said.
My stomach dropped.
A few months.
Not a few minutes.
Not a one-time bad decision after too much wine at a holiday party.
A few months.
"Involved," she said, like she was correcting something in my tone.
"We've been involved."
Daniel finally spoke.
"Claire, let me explain."
"Stop saying that."
"I know this looks bad—"
"Bad?"
I said.
"Bad is when you forget an anniversary.
Bad is when you drop the ball on picking up the kids.
This isn't bad."
I turned back to Rebecca.
"Get your things and get out."
She stood up slowly.
"I'm not the one lying," she said.
I froze.
"Excuse me?"
"I said what I said."
"You're standing in my house.
You were just kissing my husband on my children's floor."
"And I'm telling you I didn't know the kids were part of the deal."
I looked at Daniel, and his face had gone from white to gray.
"What does that mean?"
I asked.
He didn't answer.
I walked over to him and held out my hand.
"Give me your phone."
"Claire—"
"Give me your phone right now."
He pulled it out of his back pocket and unlocked it without arguing, and that told me more than anything he'd said since I walked in.
If he'd had nothing to hide, he would have made a show of it.
He would have handed it over with a little joke.
He would have let me scroll through whatever I wanted.
Instead, he barely glanced at me.
I scrolled through the messages, and there were texts — dozens of them — going back weeks, and then months, with Rebecca's name at the top of a thread that was far longer than it had any right to be.
Most of them were boring.
Dinner plans.
Little jokes.
Work complaints.
But there were also messages I couldn't read past the first line without feeling sick.
I locked the phone and put it in my pocket.
"Rebecca," I said.
"Out."
She picked up her coat from the back of the chair where she'd draped it — she'd draped it there like she lived here — and she walked to the front door.
She paused with her hand on the knob.
I thought she was going to apologize.
I thought she was going to say something that would make the floor stop spinning under my feet.
Instead, she looked over her shoulder and said:
"Ask him who came home first all those Saturdays."
And she opened the door and walked out.
I closed it behind her — hard — and locked it, and then I turned around and faced Daniel in the hallway of our house.
He had his hand pressed against the side of his face where I'd slapped him, and he looked at me like a man waiting for a storm to pass.
"Saturdays," I said.
"Claire—"
"What did she mean about Saturdays?"
He didn't answer.
And the phone in my pocket suddenly felt heavier than it should have.
