I was picking out onesies when my phone buzzed with a photo. The sonogram picture was addressed to my husband.
He never missed their Thursday coffee. He said it was just to support her, that she had no one else in the city. Marisol Gorski was his high school sweetheart, the one who got away, according to his mother. The one who was now having his baby.
The texts from his mother lit up my screen. *Be reasonable, Lark. Marisol is family.* Family. The word curdled in my stomach. Anders never missed her obstetrician appointments, but he’d forgotten our anniversary dinner. He spent weekends assembling a crib for her apartment while the nursery in our own home stood empty. His family rallied around her, a tight-knit wall I was always on the outside of. They called me cold for questioning his loyalty, for not understanding his “responsibility.”
I became the problem. The suspicious wife. The obstacle to his noble support of the mother of his child. His child.
The final piece of mail arrived on a Tuesday. The envelope was thick, cream-colored. A baby shower invitation, sent to our shared address. Hosted by his mother. I wasn’t on the host line. I was on the guest list.
Was I supposed to stand there and smile? To watch his entire family celebrate the family he’d made without me? Or was I finally supposed to accept that I was the only one fighting for a marriage that had already ended in everything but name?
There is no cheating in this book.
