Chapter 3 - The Stories Daniel Told
The kids were at my mother's that night.
That was the only thing that made the night survivable.
Daniel paced the kitchen while I sat at the table with his phone in front of me and mine in my hand, and I told him I was going to go through everything, and he didn't say a word to stop me.
"It was the first time," he said.
I didn't look up from the phone.
"It wasn't."
"It was.
Claire, I swear to you, it was the first time—"
"There are texts on this phone going back to April."
He stopped pacing.
"I was going to end it," he said.
"End what?"
"It didn't mean anything."
"Then what did it mean?"
He didn't have an answer for that.
I opened his calendar — a shared calendar, which means I had access to it all along and never thought to ask — and I started reading the entries.
Saturdays were marked as "gym" or "client meetings."
Some of them said "working lunch."
Some of them said nothing at all.
And I sat there and thought back to all the Saturdays I'd spent driving the kids to swim lessons or running errands while he was "working," and I realized I couldn't remember exactly where he'd been for most of them.
I asked him.
"Where were you on March 16th?"
"I don't—"
"Check your calendar."
He picked up his phone and scrolled, and his face shifted.
"Client meeting," he said.
"With who?"
He didn't answer.
I pulled up his banking app — he'd given me the password years ago for joint account stuff and never thought to change it — and I started looking for coffee shops and restaurants he hadn't mentioned to me.
There were plenty.
I found receipts I didn't recognize.
I found charges from a coffee shop two blocks from Rebecca's design studio.
I found a charge from a flower shop in a neighborhood we didn't live in and didn't visit.
"Flowers," I said.
"On May 3rd."
Daniel looked at the floor.
"Who were those for?"
He didn't answer.
"Daniel."
"They were for her."
The clock in the kitchen ticked.
"You bought her flowers."
"I'm sorry."
"You bought your wife flowers for our anniversary, and you bought her flowers too."
He opened his mouth to say something, and I held up my hand.
"No.
You're going to listen to me for once.
You brought another woman into our house.
You brought her into the playroom, where our children play.
You kissed her on the rug we picked out together.
You told me you were at the gym.
You told me you were in meetings.
You told me a lot of things."
He nodded.
"I did."
"Say it plainly."
He pressed his hand against his face again, and I watched him try to pull himself together, and fail.
"The kissing wasn't the first time," he said.
"I brought her here before."
"How many times?"
"I don't know exactly."
"Try to remember."
"At least a few."
"At least a few," I repeated.
He nodded.
I sat back in my chair and looked at the ceiling, and I thought about my father, who had fallen the previous fall and needed me with him three days a week, and how tired I'd been, and how many times I'd told Daniel I was sorry I wasn't more available.
And then I thought about how he'd said, on so many of those nights, "It's okay, you just focus on your dad."
"How long?"
I asked.
"Claire—"
"How long," I said again, "has this been going on?"
He looked at me with so much sorrow in his face — and I remember thinking, You don't get to be sorry yet.
Not until you tell me the truth.
"Several months," he said.
"How many?"
"I don't know exactly."
"Guess."
He guessed, and the number he guessed was too big, and I knew from the messages that it wasn't big enough.
The worst part wasn't that he told me the last several months were a mistake.
It was that he couldn't tell me exactly when the lies had started.
