My husband’s girlfriend rang our doorbell on a Saturday afternoon, and when I answered, she handed me her coat and said, “Tell Richard I’m here.”
Because she thought I was the help.
Not his wife of twelve years.
Not the woman whose name was on the deed.
Not the woman whose company paid the mortgage, his car note, his practice debts, his golf club membership, and apparently the eight-thousand-dollar birthday necklace sparkling at her throat.
The help.
I stood in the foyer holding her designer coat while she walked into my house as if she had already chosen where the new furniture would go.
She was blonde, maybe twenty-five, with that polished, expensive softness some women have when life has not yet asked them to lift anything heavier than a shopping bag. Her dress was the color of champagne. Her heels clicked against my hardwood floors with an authority she had not earned.
She looked around the foyer and sighed.
“This place needs updating. I’ll talk to Richard about it.”
I said nothing at first.
Not because I was weak.
Because sometimes the universe places a weapon in your hand and you need a second to understand its shape.
Richard was my husband.
Was my husband.
The man I built this house with, brick by brick, while working two jobs so he could finish medical school. The man I believed I had been supporting through a difficult season. The man who apparently had a girlfriend young enough to believe wives were background characters and homes came furnished with invisible women.
“Where’s Richard?” she asked.
She didn’t even look at me.
“He’s not here,” I said.
“Well, when will he be back? I don’t have all day.”
“Who are you?”
I already knew.
Of course I knew.
But I wanted to hear her say it.
She turned then, finally acknowledging my face as something with language attached.
“I’m Alexis. Richard’s girlfriend.”
She tilted her head, amused.
“And you are… the help, apparently?”
She laughed.
A quick, bright, careless sound.
“Well, yes, obviously. Though Richard usually has better-dressed staff. Are you new?”
I looked down at myself.
Jeans.
A faded college sweatshirt.
Bare feet.
Saturday clothes.
My hair clipped back badly because I had spent the morning reviewing quarterly projections in my home office and eating toast over the sink.
In my own house, dressed for my own quiet weekend, I apparently looked like the staff to the child sleeping with my husband.
“I’ve been here twelve years,” I said.
“Twelve years?” Alexis rolled her eyes. “The help always exaggerates tenure. Just tell Richard I’m here. I’ll be in the living room.”
She walked past me.
Past the framed photograph from our courthouse wedding.
Past the antique mirror Richard and I bought at a flea market when we were too broke to buy new.
Past the console table I refinished myself during the year his practice opened and lost money from the first month.
She entered my living room, sat on my couch, and put her shoes on my coffee table.
The coffee table Richard and I bought at an estate sale our first year of marriage. We had sanded it together in the garage, back when he still pretended to like building things with me.
“Could you bring me some water?” she called out. “With lemon. Not too much ice.”
I brought her water.
No lemon.
Too much ice.
She sighed like I had personally set civilization back.
“Is Richard training you? This is not how he likes things done.”
“How does Richard like things done?”
“Properly. Efficiently. With respect for his guests.”
“Are you a frequent guest?”
“I’m here every Tuesday and Thursday when his wife is at work,” she said, like she was reciting a tennis schedule. “Sometimes Saturdays if she’s at her book club.”
I did not have a book club.
I had never had a book club.
And I had not worked Tuesdays or Thursdays in two months because I changed my executive schedule after hiring a new COO.
Richard did not know that.
“You seem to know a lot about his wife,” I said.
Alexis laughed again.
“I know enough. Older. Let herself go. Boring.”
She lifted the glass, frowned at the ice, and continued.
“Richard’s only with her for convenience. Cheaper to keep her than divorce her. He says that all the time. She trapped him young before he knew better. Now he’s stuck with some frumpy woman who probably doesn’t even know what Botox is.”
I touched my face without meaning to.
Thirty-seven.
Some lines, yes.
A little tired around the eyes from running a company with two hundred employees and a husband whose medical practice bled money like a neglected wound.
But frumpy?
“Richard deserves better,” she went on. “Someone young. Beautiful. Someone who understands his needs. Not some housewife who probably thinks missionary is adventurous.”
I blinked.
There are moments so vulgar they become clarifying.
“Maybe she works,” I suggested.
“Oh, please. Richard says she has some little job at a company. Probably a receptionist or something. Nothing important.”
My little job.
The company I founded eight years earlier after building its first client list from a folding table in a rented office. The company with two hundred employees. The company that paid for the house Alexis was insulting, the car Richard drove, and the failing practice he still described at dinner parties as “expanding.”
“Richard’s practice must do well,” I said.
She snorted.
“Between us, it’s struggling. But that’s what happens when you’re too nice. He needs a woman who pushes him to be ruthless. His wife probably encourages his soft side. Maybe she pays some bills while he figures things out with her little salary.”
“Please. Richard’s the man. He provides.”
I looked at her necklace.
Tiffany.
I knew because I had seen the charge.
I went to the kitchen and pulled out my phone.
Richard was at his golf club.
Saturday routine.
Never changed.
I texted him:
Come home immediately. Emergency with the house.
He replied five minutes later.
Middle of a game. What happened?
I stared at the screen.
Then typed:
Ceiling in your office collapsed.
He called instantly.