His Wife Called Me the Other Woman

"What do you think you are to me, Caroline?" It was a round of Truth or Dare, and Theodore was smiling when he asked. I was clutching his sleeve. "Your girlfriend," I said softly.

And the whole room burst out laughing at once. Theodore tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear, his voice as gentle as ever.

He said he'd legally married Delaney three years ago.

Every message I'd ever sent him saying I missed him, he and his wife had read together at bedtime, for laughs. "Before your mom passed, she made me promise I wouldn't abandon you, no matter what.

I gave her my word.

That's the only reason I've stayed by your side." "But you should be able to tell the difference between companionship and love." The door to the private room swung open, and Delaney walked in.

She turned her phone screen toward everyone. My careful little overtures to Theodore, the longing I'd never dared say out loud, all those latenight calls.

Every bit of it had been stitched into one long screenshot for the room to gawk at.

She rubbed her belly and asked me, sweetly, "Sis, when your mom broke up my parents' marriage back then, was she like you, too?" The laughter around me grew louder.

Someone held up a phone to film. So everyone had known the truth. And I was the last to find out I'd been playing the clown.

Chapter 1 "Carrie, stop this." Theodore's voice followed me from the end of the hallway, unhurried, like he was coaxing a cat with its fur on end.

The laughter from the private room was still seeping through the wall. My hand shook so hard I couldn't even hit the elevator button.

He came over and, as naturally as anything, smoothed the hair on my shoulder. "You've been drinking. Don't go running off. I'll take you home." I shook him off. "Home where?" "Home.

Where else would you go?" "Theodore, which place is home?" He gave a little laugh, like he hadn't expected me to ask something like that. "Carrie, that apartment's in my name.

I've let you live there for three years. Your clothes are still hanging in the closet. Where else would you go?" I laughed bitterly. I didn't know how to answer. He was right.

I'd spent more than a thousand days and nights in that apartment. The pothos I kept on the windowsill. The sparkling water I always kept in the fridge for him.

I'd thought it was our home. It was only something he'd lent me. The elevator arrived. The moment the doors opened, my phone lit up.

A message from Delaney, with a fifteensecond video attached. In it, Theodore was down on one knee, sliding a diamond ring onto her ring finger.

The background was my favorite French restaurant, the one he'd said he couldn't get a reservation at on my birthday.

The caption was just two words. [Matching yours.] Chapter 2 [Sis, the ring was sized off your finger.

I had to get it taken down a size before it fit.] [I actually laughed the day Theo proposed. He didn't even have to learn new lines.

He'd already rehearsed them with you.] The phone slipped through my fingers and hit the elevator floor, screen up.

Theodore bent down and picked it up, glanced at the conversation on the screen, and frowned. "She doesn't know any better.

I'll talk to her later." "But Carrie, there are some things you really need to see clearly." He pressed the button for the basement level. "You were nineteen when your mom died.

On your own, you couldn't even afford to eat.

I'm the one who took you in, set you up with a job, found your grandmother the best surgeon there is." "All these years, your connections, the circles you could get into.

Is there a single one that wasn't because of me?" "I've never held it against you. But you can't act like you don't know your place." The elevator reached the basement.

His car was parked in the closest spot. On the passengerside floor sat a pink diaper bag, packed neat and tidy.

I didn't get in. "Theodore," I said, "gratitude and love are two different things." His hand paused on the car door. "You let me call you 'hubby' for seven years.

You went weddingdress shopping with me and said I was the only one you wanted for the rest of your life.

And now you're telling me that was gratitude?" "You called me Carrie in front of your oldest friends. You took me to every dinner.

When did you ever correct a single person who thought I was your girlfriend?" The garage exhaust fans droned on. "Carrie, I didn't handle some things well.

But that doesn't change how good I've been to you." "Good to me? A minute ago you told a room full of people that I'd mixed up companionship with love.

That's good to me?" My phone buzzed again. A text from the bank. The authorizeduser card on his account now had a zero limit.

Right behind it came a push notification from building management: the apartment's door code had been changed remotely by the property owner. I looked up at him.

There wasn't a trace of surprise on his face. "Delaney's pregnant. She needs somewhere calm to get ready for the baby.

Some transitions are better made early." "Stay at a hotel tonight. I'll cover it." "Then you should've told me sooner! You waited until today.

Did you want to watch me humiliate myself first, and then wrap this up?" He rubbed the space between his brows, like he was handling some thorny piece of business. "Caroline, the way you're acting right now, you're exactly like your mother was back then." "Don't go down her road." The hotel pillow smelled like industrial detergent.

I tossed and turned all night without shutting my eyes. After the sun came up, I went through every banking app I had.

Checking and savings together came to eighteen hundred dollars. My payroll account showed this pay period's deposit on hold, pending a financial review by the staffing agency.

I got to the office at nine. The front desk didn't stop me, but the head of administration, Roger Farnham, was already waiting in the conference room.

He slid a termination notice across the table. He didn't so much as offer me a cup of coffee. "Ms. Monroe, this wasn't my call." "What do you mean?

I was number one last quarter." "Mr. Whitcombe had a word with us. He said you've been emotionally unstable lately, and there's concern it'll affect the project.

Your contract has an early termination clause. You'll get two months' pay as severance." "Paid into which account?" He flipped through the file. "The account Mr. Whitcombe provided.

The one your authorizeduser card is on." The same account that had zeroed out my card last night. The severance would come out of his pocket and go right back into it.

He never meant to actually give me a cent. As I walked out of the office building, my phone rang. Grandma's voice was faint, like it was coming through a thin veil.

Chapter 3 "Carrie, can you come see Grandma today? I've been wanting some of your peach pie." Grandma had a rare autoimmune disease.

Only one hospital in the country could do the surgery, and the lead surgeon was an old friend of Theodore's father.

Her hospital bills ran over a hundred thousand dollars a month, and Theodore had fronted every cent. When I pushed open the door to her room, my whole face froze.

Delaney was sitting at Grandma's bedside, peeling an apple. She was going very slowly, a gentleness put on for show.

Grandma was holding her hand, smiling so wide the lines around her eyes crinkled up. "This girl Delaney is so thoughtful.

Every time she comes, she brings me chicken soup she made fresh." "Carrie, look.

Delaney brought this neck pillow back for me from overseas." The woman who'd shown my chat history to everyone in that private room, the woman who'd rubbed her belly and asked if I was following in my mother's footsteps, was feeding my grandmother slices of apple. "Oh, sis, you're here?

I was just keeping Grandma company." She even called her Grandma. I was so angry I laughed.

I walked up to her. "What are you doing here?" Grandma patted the back of my hand, explaining and soothing me all at once. "Carrie, Delaney comes to see me every week.

Don't talk like that. It'll cause bad blood." Delaney stood and gave me her seat, one hand resting on her lower belly, and tilted her head close to my ear.

Just loud enough for me alone to hear. "Sis, was the hotel bed hard last night? Not as nice as the one at Theo's place, I bet." I didn't blow up in front of Grandma.

After she left, Grandma held on to me. "Carrie, why hasn't Theo been coming by lately? Did you two have a fight?" "No.

He's just been busy." "Don't lie to Grandma." Her eyes went red. Her lips trembled. "Have you two settled things or not? You can see for yourself what shape I'm in.

All I want is to see you married before I go." "Theo promised me.

He said he'd give you a home." Footsteps came down the hallway, and Theodore's mother, Lorraine, walked in carrying an insulated food container. Her eyes swept over me. "Well.

Carrie's here too." Grandma tried to push herself up to sit. "Lorraine, dear, you came all this way yourself?" Lorraine smiled, pressed a hand to her shoulder to keep her down, and set the container aside. "Mrs.

Osborne, there's something I need to make clear to you. Our Theo cares for Carrie like she's his own little sister." "But this girl reads too much into things.

She's always clinging to Theo and won't let go, and it's making Delaney very uneasy." The smile set on Grandma's face. I opened my mouth to explain, but Lorraine got there first.

She bent down close to Grandma's ear, all soft and mild. "Mrs.

Osborne, this room you're in costs four thousand dollars a day." "You can't very well let Carrie spend the Whitcombes' money and keep hanging on to a Whitcombe man, now can you?" When I left the hospital, I sat by the side of the road for a long time, until a notification from a shortvideo app popped up on my phone.

Someone had uploaded the video from the reunion.

The title read: [Girl publicly exposed as boyfriend's backup, whole room dies laughing] The look on my face as I clutched Theodore's sleeve and said "Your girlfriend" had been screenshotted and turned into a meme.

The caption read: [Saddest backup of the year. The comments never end.] [Isn't she the homewrecker? And she thinks she's the wife?] [Seven years and she never figured it out?

That's a whole new level of dumb.] [Seven years of a onewoman show. Is that dedication or just pathetic?] The next two days were like a chainreaction pileup.

Chapter 4 I didn't go out. I holed up in the hotel living on instant noodles, until the morning of the third day, when I got a call from an unknown number.

It was the groundskeeper at Willow Creek Cemetery. "Ms. Monroe, someone spraypainted your mother's headstone last night.

We've already called the police, but you'd better come down." When I got there, one word was slashed across the face of my mother's headstone, a glaring red: HOMEWRECKER.

Beside it, in smaller letters: LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER. The groundskeeper said the security cameras had been broken for four days.

I crouched on the ground and scraped at the paint with my fingers. The red had soaked into the grain of the stone. No matter what I did, it wouldn't come off. My phone rang.

Theodore. "Carrie, I've already got people working on burying the video online." "Someone spraypainted my mom's grave.

Did you bury that too?" He was silent for two seconds. "I didn't know about this.

Maybe somebody saw the video and…" "If you'd stopped Delaney in that room that night, would anyone have seen that video?" He didn't answer that. "Come back and stay for now.

It's not safe out there. I've arranged another place for you, not far from the old house." "The old house?" My hands stopped moving. "The house my mom left me?" "Right.

Delaney liked the location. She said an energy healer looked at it, and the energy there's good for the baby. They moved in last week." My ears rang.

That was the one and only thing my mom had left behind in this life. A little house with a yard she'd saved up and bought herself before she got married.

She'd grown gardenias along half the wall, and under the porch eaves hung a wind chime she'd made with her own hands. Theodore knew.

Every year on the anniversary of my mom's death, when he went back with me to scrub the floors, he'd said he would keep that house for me and nobody was allowed to touch it. "You gave my mom's house to Delaney?" "Carrie, the house is just sitting empty anyway.

I'll make it up to you with a better one later." "That was my mom's." He sighed. "You really need to work on this temper of yours. Delaney's pregnant.

I can't have her uncomfortable where she lives.

Are you coming to stay at the place I set up or not?" "If you're not, I'll cover your expenses, but there's one thing you have to agree to." "Next week Delaney's having a baby shower.

Show your face. Things online look really bad right now. Come out and make a statement. Say you've always known about me and Delaney, and we're all just friends." My eyes stung.

I laughed. "Want me to add that for seven years it was all in my head and I was the one throwing myself at you?" An edge came into his voice. "Carrie, I'm already cleaning up this mess for you.

If you won't cooperate, I can't keep burying that stuff online." "Think it over. You've still got your grandmother." The call ended. My phone lit up again. Delaney had sent a photo.

She was sitting in the yard of the old house, in the rattan chair my mom had woven by hand, feet kicked up, the gardenias half in bloom behind her.

There was another one next to it: a dark green jade pendant hanging around her neck.

It was the jade pendant I'd had blessed at Cloud Mountain Temple, after three months of weekends on my knees there with Theodore beside me, praying for my mom's wellbeing.

I'd stored it at the very back of a cabinet in the old house. The caption: [Your jade pendant is so calming, sis.

Ever since I put it on, the baby's been so good.] [Thanks for the house, sis.

The energy really is great.] At five in the morning on the seventh day, a call from the hospital jolted me awake in the hotel bed. "Ms.

Monroe, your grandmother is extremely agitated. Her blood pressure is at a dangerous level.

She saw some things online, and now she's refusing to cooperate with treatment." When I rushed into the hospital, the door to her room was standing wide open. Chapter 5