I knew the text was bad news the minute I read it. Stomach-churning, gut-twisting bad. And then my phone chimed again. Ding! Ding!
I got the texts while I was in Victoria’s Secret. That’s right. I was actually in the middle of buying sexy lingerie for that fucker when I received the announcement that my husband had slept with another woman. Because that’s what it was, what it meant. There wasn’t any other way to read it. Or maybe there would’ve been if he hadn’t followed it up with: I love how you suck my cock.
A classy guy, my husband. Also generally very careful, but I guess he was so taken away with his memories of the night before, the world-class cock-sucking he’d received, that he’d tapped the wrong text thread—was her name similar to mine or were we the only two people he texted with? One of a million questions leaping through my mind—and sent the message to me instead of whoever he intended it for.
When I received the alert for the second text, I tried to look away. But in my innocent life as it existed then, I’d enabled the floating preview bar on my phone so I could see the first lines of whatever anyone sent me. I had nothing to hide, you see, nothing to fear. I couldn’t avoid the words as they appeared on the screen that was grasped in my shaking hand, warm to the touch. I read them and felt frozen to the floor, my other hand still stuck in the 50-percent-off silk underwear bin I’d been riffling through to find my size.
My mind was whirling as fast as my gut. I had no idea how to react. Should I write back or allow him to sit and wonder why the cock-sucking genius was letting him twist in the wind without a response until he figured out who he’d actually texted? Should I simply pretend the whole thing never happened?
I admit: I kind of wished I could do the last one. My finger actually swiped to delete the texts, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want that filth on my phone, but I couldn’t put it in the trash and pretend I’d never read it, either.
Oh, Tom, you stupid asshole.
Why couldn’t you have been more careful?
• • •
“So,” my therapist, Linda, says. “You made it through the memorial.”
We’re in her office, the place I’ve been coming to once a week for nine months. A friend of a friend suggested her without my having to ask for a referral. When your husband dies suddenly, it’s assumed you’ll need some kind of mental health assistance to recover.
“I did.”
“I saw you on TV.”
I pull a face. “Maybe now it will stop.”
“Perhaps.”
Linda’s a pragmatist, and she doesn’t believe in feeding me false hope. Better to accept the things I cannot change and all that, like an addict, even though I’m the substance being consumed.
“You were feeling anxious about the interview with Teo. How did it go?”
“Okay, I think.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
I pull my feet under me on the couch; Linda’s across from me on a matching one. One of the things I like about Linda, she doesn’t believe in creating distinctions between us. Our sessions are often like highly effective conversations with my girlfriends, sans alcohol. I don’t know what I expected therapy to be; I only know that when I got out of the car before my first session, I started crying, and the first thing I said to her was, “I don’t want this to be a lifetime relationship.” She’d agreed, and we’d gone on from there.
“You always say that.”
Linda’s eyes crinkle. A natural beauty in her midforties, she has few lines that mar her dark-brown skin. “That is what you pay me for, after all.”
“True. Well, I got through it. He asked all the questions I expected, and I gave the best answers I could. If I had to guess, I told two outright lies and six lies by omission, but I wasn’t keeping strict count.”
“You don’t have to keep a tally of lies.”
I shift my eyes away from hers. Linda’s office is a palette of taupe. I keep meaning to bring a colorful throw with me someday to brighten up the place, but it always slips my mind.
“Don’t I?”
“We’ve discussed this. You could simply unburden yourself. Or, alternatively, make peace with the fact that you’re entitled to certain secrets.”
“I feel like a fraud.”
“You’re not a fraud. Your husband died. You did what you had to do to protect your children’s future. To protect your future.”
“But I hated him. I hated him when he died, and everyone thinks I’m this grieving widow, that I’m missing him, that I wish he was still here. Still with me and our family.”
“Who cares what anyone thinks? And you are grieving him. Maybe not in the way you think others assume you are, but you are. Do you think you’re the only person who wasn’t happy with their spouse that day?”
“It’s not the same. I wanted him dead. I’d even fantasized about how I’d do it.”
“Did your fantasies involve rigging the gas pipes beneath his building so they’d explode and kill five hundred and twelve other people?”
“No. Well, maybe just him and her. I didn’t care how it happened. But I thought it, and then it came true.”
Linda frowns. “You don’t believe your fantasies played a role in what happened that day, do you? Because it was a terrible accident, one that could’ve been avoided with better inspections, perhaps, but nothing more than that.”
“No . . .”
“This is important, Cecily.”
“It is strange, isn’t it?”
“Coincidences aren’t strange or the evidence of anything; they’re a part of
