HE SAID THE SEA MADE HIM SICK. THEN I SAW HIM ON A DOLPHIN TOUR WITH ANOTHER WOMAN.
Chapter 4
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Not a girlfriend.
Not officially.
Maybe that was another lie he had told her.
I watched the realization move across her face.
“So what am I?”
“Can we please wait until we’re off this boat?”
She shook her head.
“No. I want to hear this.”
Caleb pressed his lips together.
He looked trapped.
I remembered how many times I had apologized for asking him to do things with me.
That memory came out of nowhere.
A sunset cruise.
A ferry ride.
Kayaks.
Each time he refused, I had eventually felt guilty for pushing.
“Sorry,” I would say.
“I forgot.”
Or, “It’s fine, we’ll do something else.”
I had spent years accommodating an illness he didn’t have.
Not because he disliked the ocean.
Because he disliked going there with me.
That distinction was worse.
I stepped away from them and gripped the railing.
The water was bright enough to hurt my eyes.
A dolphin surfaced twenty yards away.
Then another.
Everyone cheered.
I watched one gray back arc above the water before disappearing.
I had imagined sharing this with Caleb so many times.
I had imagined elbowing him excitedly.
Taking a picture together.
Laughing at myself for being too enthusiastic.
Now he stood behind me, caught between his wife and the woman he had been seeing.
And somehow the dolphins were still beautiful.
That made me angry.
The world should not have been beautiful at that moment.
The sky should have cracked.
The water should have gone black.
Something should have acknowledged what was happening to me.
Instead, sunlight glittered across the ocean.
I hated it.
“Emily.”
Caleb had come closer.
I turned around.
Rachel was several feet away, staring at her phone now.
Maybe checking messages.
Maybe looking for all the places where the truth had been sitting in front of her.
“I made a mistake,” Caleb said quietly.
I laughed.
“You got on the wrong boat?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“This sarcastic thing.”
I stared at him.
“You’re critiquing my reaction?”
“No.”
“Because I’m really interested in the correct way to react when you find your husband rubbing sunscreen onto another woman.”
He dropped his voice further.
“I know how it looks.”
“How it looks?”
His face tightened.
“We became close. I didn’t plan it.”
There it was.
The attempt to transform choices into weather.
It happened.
We became close.
Things were difficult.
One thing led to another.
No verbs with an owner.
No sentence beginning with I chose.
I lied.
I booked the tour.
I touched her.
I came home to you afterward.
I said, “Did you sleep with her?”
He froze.
That was answer enough.
Still, I waited.
His gaze moved toward the water.
“Caleb.”
“Yes.”
One word.
Soft.
Almost respectful.
I thought it would break me.
Instead, it made everything very clear.
I nodded once.
“How many times?”
“Emily, don’t.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
I stared.
“You don’t know?”
“I mean, I’m not counting.”
Some pain is so sharp that your mind refuses to process it immediately.
That sentence floated between us.
I’m not counting.
I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, Rachel was watching us.
She looked devastated.
Apparently she hadn’t known everything either.
Interesting.
Caleb had managed to make both women feel cheated by the same affair.
Rachel walked over slowly.
Her voice was quiet.
“You told me you weren’t sleeping with her anymore.”
He didn’t answer.
She nodded as if she had expected that.
Then she held out his hat.
He didn’t take it.
She let it fall onto the wet deck between them.
Nobody moved.
A gust of wind pushed it a few inches toward my shoe.
I looked down at the cap I had once wrapped in tissue paper and given him on his birthday.
Then I stepped over it.
“Emily,” Caleb said.
“I don’t want to hear anything else here.”
“Then let’s talk at home.”
Home.
The word hit me harder than expected.
I turned toward him.
“You mean the house I apparently moved out of?”
His face changed.
For the first time, shame reached it.
Not enough.
But some.
I walked toward the other end of the boat.
Caleb started after me.
Rachel stopped him.
“Don’t.”
He turned.
She was crying now, but her voice was steady.
“Leave her alone.”
For one strange second, the other woman protected me from my husband.
And I knew, before the boat ever reached shore, that something in my marriage had already ended.
I just hadn’t decided what I was going to do with the body yet.
PART 3: WHAT HE SAVED FOR HER
The ride back took forty-three minutes.
I know because I watched every minute pass on my phone.
Caleb stayed near the center of the boat.
Rachel stayed at the front.
May you like
I stayed at the back.
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