Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN GREEN
Delia called me the next afternoon. Celia had given her my number only after asking me, and I'd said yes. I didn't know what I wanted to hear. I knew I wanted at least one person involved to tell me what Colin had said without making me pry each sentence loose.
“I thought you were separated,” Delia said immediately. “That doesn't undo what you went through. I need you to know what he told me.”
We met at a public library café on Friday while the triplets were at daycare. Delia arrived carrying a paper notebook, not a dramatic folder of evidence. She was thirty-eight, about my age, and looked as exhausted as I felt.
They'd met in April at a neighborhood fundraiser. Colin had told her the marriage was over, but that we still shared a house temporarily because three toddlers made moving complicated. When she asked why his social media still showed family pictures, he said I wanted to keep our private situation off the internet until we'd settled a parenting schedule.
It was a careful lie. We did share a house. Our children did make any move complicated. He'd chosen the true parts that would support the false one.
Delia showed me messages on her phone. In July, Colin wrote that I knew he was seeing someone but preferred not to meet her. In August, he said he had the children “half the time.” During those weeks, he'd done daycare pickup on Tuesdays and Thursdays when his shifts allowed. He'd stayed in our house every night.
“Did you see us at the wedding?” I asked.
“From the back during the photographs. I thought you were bringing the kids to see Miles. Colin said the picture was for them.”
She swallowed. “He told me you wanted one normal photograph to put in their room.”
I almost laughed. I had booked the session because Colin had insisted everyone should see us together. He had let Delia believe it was my request, a generous concession to an ex-husband.
“Why were you in the conservatory during dinner?” I asked.
“He said the children were eating and he would introduce me to his friends once they'd gone. He said it would be hard for you to see me in front of them.”
She'd trusted that as kindness. I remembered Max crying when the band tested its microphone. I had taken him to a quiet room on the other side of the building. Colin had been a short walk away, asking Delia whether she'd like more wine.
Delia admitted she had seen me once later, through the conservatory windows. I was pushing the stroller toward the parking lot while trying to keep Iris's blanket from dragging on the ground. She'd asked Colin why he wasn't helping. He'd said I'd refused help from him for months and that following me would cause a scene. Delia hadn't gone after me either.
“I should have questioned that,” she said. “Separated or not, those were his children.”
I appreciated that she didn't tell me what she would have done if she'd known everything. Neither of us could change those minutes in the parking lot. I did ask her whether Colin had called after the wedding. He'd complained that I had ruined his night by leaving before the toast. He had told me the same thing on Sunday morning, without once mentioning the person he had spent it with.
Delia slid the notebook across the table. She'd written down dates before our meeting so she wouldn't rely on memory. At the bottom was the address of a two-bedroom apartment near the hospital where Colin worked. She and Colin had toured it the Thursday before the wedding. He told her he'd move in first; they could decide later whether living together made sense.
“He said the second bedroom was for the triplets,” Delia said. “I asked whether you'd agreed to a schedule. He told me it was already settled.”
It wasn't. Colin hadn't even asked which bedtime book Iris wanted on repeat that month.
Delia showed me a holding-deposit receipt Colin had forwarded her. She hadn't paid for the apartment or signed anything. The receipt showed his name and a payment made that Thursday.
I recognized the date because Colin and I had discussed daycare expenses that same evening. He'd told me he was moving money from our shared reserve to secure places for the children when my schedule changed in the fall. I had thanked him for taking care of it.
“I haven't spoken to him since I found out,” Delia said. “I won't ask you to believe anything I can't show you.”
I believed the messages in front of me. Whether I would ever like Delia was a different question, and one I didn't need to answer that day.
Before I left, she said she was sorry for standing with Colin while I handled dinner alone. She had known there were children in the next room. She hadn't known their mother was still his wife in every sense of the word.
May you like
I went back to my car and opened the banking app. The joint savings account showed a transfer of $6,200 on the Thursday before the wedding. The description was simply Transfer to C. Mercer.
That was the money we'd set aside for the triplets' daycare.
