The Wife He Kept Secret

"Something happens to you and you hide it from me?

You couldn't pick up a phone and call me?" We hadn't spoken in three months, and that was the first thing my husband demanded of me.

He had just found out I'd been burned — and that I'd gone to the hospital alone to have it treated.

But earlier that same day, when I went in to get the dressing changed, I saw him at the hospital with his exgirlfriend.

She had his coat around her shoulders, and she was telling him to hurry so he wouldn't make her miss her appointment. And I stepped out of the way for them, gracefully.

Me — the wife of three years nobody had ever been told about. His concern had come too late. I didn't explain, and I didn't want to argue anymore.

I only asked him one thing: "Let's get divorced. Okay?" Chapter 1 After a bad fight, Reid and I went almost three months without speaking.

He moved into an apartment near his office, and we saw each other only a handful of times. This time I didn't back down first. I ate normally and slept normally.

Reid Lockhart hardly crossed my mind. When we ran into each other at the hospital, we both froze for a second.

He and Elle were walking side by side, talking and laughing, and the difference in their heights was exactly right.

Elle was underdressed for the weather, with his coat draped over her shoulders. From a distance, they looked like two people who had been made for each other.

I was there to get a dressing changed. I hadn't expected to find them in the same building. If Reid weren't my husband, I would have thought they looked good together too.

The strange part was that seeing Reid and Elle, my first thought wasn't jealousy. I felt completely calm. I was still deciding whether to get fried chicken or a steak afterward.

The runin caught us both. Reid's cool eyes stayed on me.

I started to go around them and leave, and he caught my hand. "What are you doing at a hospital?" Before I could get my bearings, before I'd worked out what to say, Elle spoke up. "Reid." "My appointment's about to start.

Could you come up with me first?" Then she looked at me. I pulled my mouth into a smile for the two of them. It came out warm and bright. "You two should go on up, then.

I'm heading out." That kind of graciousness was exactly the attitude Reid wanted from me: never asking about anything involving him and his ex, never getting jealous.

Not caring was something I could manage perfectly well. I thought my performance just then was flawless. Somebody should have handed me an Oscar.

Who could have guessed I was the one married to Reid? I lifted his hand off mine and walked out of the hospital. Outside, I found a fried chicken place a block away and sat down.

Three months of watching everything I ate, and I could finally order whatever I wanted.

Mo called. "Clem, have you eaten?" I told her I was working on fried chicken. "Does Reid still not know about the miscarriage and the burn?" I hummed a yes. "But I saw him today, when I went in to get the dressing changed." Mo sounded surprised. "And you didn't tell him?" I sighed. "No." She pushed. "He didn't even ask why you were at a hospital?" I took a sip of my soda before I answered. "He was there with Elle.

You know he and I had a pretty ugly fight, right?" "By the time it was over, I already had a feeling the two of us were done." "There was never a good moment to bring it up, and after a while I couldn't be bothered." Mo swore under her breath. "What an asshole.

Total garbage husband." Anyone looking at Reid and me, myself included, could see it was out of balance. He was the one with the upper hand.

Chapter 2 Which meant he controlled my moods. Reid ran cold and didn't say much. Apart from that one blowup, we had never actually fought.

The chill was something I felt from my side only. Elle came home from her training in Europe, and Reid and his friends threw her a welcomehome party.

Reid was the one who drove out to the airport to get her. I had just landed myself. Same flight as Elle.

I'd moved my ticket up to come home early without telling Reid, because it was the middle of the night and I didn't want to drag him out of bed.

Coming out of the gate, I saw the long, straight figure of a man standing near the exit. Three years of marriage, and he had never once set up a surprise like that for me.

O'Hare was nearly empty at that hour, the fluorescent light in the hall very bright. He stood straight enough to draw the eye, his face giving away nothing.

Something in me lit up, and I was already lifting my hand to wave. How had Reid found out which predawn flight into Chicago I was on? "Reid." The voice was soft and light.

The cool in Reid's eyes finally warmed. He was holding a bouquet. Reid had always had good taste, in clothes and in everything else.

The flowers were layered and gentle, pale shades bleeding into deeper ones — not the loud, blazing red roses that pass for taste with most men. The corner of Reid's mouth lifted.

His voice came out lazy. "All these years, and you could finally bear to come back?" Something told me this was Elle. In three years with Reid, I had caught that name now and then.

Elle. The story was that he had been crazy about her once. That he had come very close to marrying her.

Elle's smile turned playful, and she gave him a wink. "Couldn't bear being away from you." I didn't miss a single small shift in Reid's face. His smile stalled for a beat.

Then it came back. What was he thinking in that half second? Whether he was sorry he hadn't waited for her? My mood was a drop tower.

Hauled all the way to the top, then dropped straight out from under me. I had thought my icefaced husband had finally figured something out. He hadn't come for me at all.

The drop between what I'd thought and what was true left a thin, sour ache under my ribs. I took a rideshare home.

The next day, he didn't bring up Elle, and I didn't bring up seeing him at the airport. That evening, one of Reid's friends posted a photo dump on Instagram.

In the group shot, Reid and Elle were sitting together. The party was for her, so the two of them had the middle of the frame.

Somehow the picture felt like something taken after a wedding. All those friends had come to witness Reid and Elle. At the airport I hadn't gotten a good look at her face.

The photo caught every feature. The first glance put a tremor through me. She was beautiful, but not the kind of beautiful that comes at you.

Her features were fine and exact, her skin clear and very fair. You could tell she worked out — a good figure, not the thin, drawn kind.

She had done well for herself, and she came from money. I went digging back into her college years.

Lakemont, the school she and Reid had both gone to, still had an old anonymous confessions page up that nobody had bothered to take down.

A few of the posts were about the two of them. [okay who is the gorgeous girl in the languages program, somebody get me a contact.] [Elle Marchetti? pretty sure she has a boyfriend.] [lol give it up, man, her boyfriend's goodlooking too.] The more I learned about the two of them, the worse it got.

A fine, spreading ache opened across my chest. Out of those scraps, and out of the stories I'd heard before, I put together the shape of Reid and Elle's past.

Between Reid and me, Reid had the upper hand. Chapter 3 Between him and Elle, Elle was the one with the upper hand.

Whoever loves more ends up small without meaning to, forever anxious about holding on to what they have.

Elle had an old Tumblr she'd forgotten to delete, still public, still holding everything from her college years.

While they were together, Reid kept track of when her period was due. He had washed blood out of her underwear by hand.

He had even believed that childish story about how a couple who kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel on Navy Pier stay together forever.

The Reid who dated Elle and the Reid I married were not the same man. I closed the page. That was when I noticed Reid's display name on Instagram. L. He set it himself.

I'd been looking at it for three years. I'd always assumed the L was for Lockhart. It wasn't. It was Elle.

I had always told myself Reid was simply a cold person, that it was how he was built. It took seeing him standing in front of Elle for me to understand.

With the right person, he knew perfectly well how to run warm as well as cold. November brought Chicago its first snow of the year. It was Elle's first week back in the city.

I had dropped a client at a hotel, and there I saw Reid and Elle going in and out of that same hotel together. The moment I caught sight of them, my head went thick and slow.

Then something detonated behind my eyes. Reid came out of the hotel. I had just gotten my client settled. We looked at each other.

It took me a long time to work up to the question. "That woman just now. Was that Elle?" Reid nodded. "Yes." He didn't bother to explain a thing. We drove home separately.

I knew Reid ran cold. But once I had seen the other version of him, the one that surfaced in front of Elle, I stopped being able to accept it.

He couldn't even be bothered to give me an explanation. He was so distant with me that I couldn't find one solid thing to be angry about.

The fight came the day after I ran into him at that hotel. Photos of Elle and Reid going in and out of the hotel together got out.

Reid came home with something dark sitting under the flatness of his face. His eyes landed on me. My heart pulled tight for no reason I could name. "Clementine.

Did you put those photos out?" I didn't follow. "What photos?" He laughed, cold. "Still playing dumb?" There was a sneer riding under it. "You followed me last night just to get those pictures?

To prove I'm cheating, that she and I picked up where we left off?" "You want something to be going on between us that badly?" The photos were right there in front of me, and I got the general shape of it.

He had it wrong. He had already decided I was the one who took them. "This kind of rumor could cost her the contract." "She trained in Europe for three years.

Dance is the most important thing in her life." "You want to ruin her that badly?" That was who I was, inside Reid's head.

My nose stung and my eyes went hot. "Reid." "If the two of you had nothing to feel guilty about, nobody would have been able to take those pictures." "She knows you're married.

When a married man walks his ex into a hotel, how come her career doesn't cross your mind then?" "And does she know that getting tangled up with a married ex makes her the other woman, and that she'd be going in with her eyes wide open?" Something savage under his brow was past hiding. "Clementine." "She was my first love.

When I married you I still wasn't over her, and none of this is something you learned today." "You're jealous now?

Three years ago you didn't mind that I had an ex." Before I married him, I did know there had been a first love.

Chapter 4 After Reid said all of that, everything in my head blew apart. The feeling jammed up in my throat. What he had said was as ugly as it gets.

In his heart, Elle was the flawless one, kept somewhere nothing could ever touch her. In his eyes, I was the conniving little snake. "Reid, you're awful." The tears came in a flood.

It was the first time we had ever fought. I hated that my tear ducts had never once taken orders from me. Crying at that particular moment looked like backing down.

It was humiliating. Neither of us reached out to the other after that. November in Chicago, and the first snow of the year came down.

I left the office after work and it was already full dark. My foot slid on the ice. I went down hard. A wringing pain twisted low in my belly. It was not a normal kind of pain.

On a winter night, hardly anyone stays late. There was nobody around. I called 911 and waited for the ambulance where I had fallen.

Once that call ended, I couldn't leave it alone, and I called Reid. It connected. His end was loud with people.

Somewhere behind him, a voice went up. "Reid, you here to pick up Elle?" The pain was too much for me to push a word through, and at some point the call ended without my knowing when.

All I knew was that Reid was with Elle right then. They took me to the hospital. A doctor leaned in close to my ear. "You're pregnant. Did you know that?" I hadn't known.

Lying on the table, I felt the tears run out of the corners of my eyes. I signed the consent form myself. The smell of disinfectant, then the anesthesia, and I went under.

I didn't contact Reid again. I let Mo know, and I hired a home health aide to look after me for a few days once I was out. I was discharged a few days later.

From that day on, Reid and I drifted further apart. I stopped reaching out to him. When he wasn't home late at night, I no longer texted.

I stopped leaving a light on when a work dinner ran long. Once I stopped holding on, life got a lot easier. The fight and the miscarriage might as well never have happened.

Mo was afraid I would fall apart and dragged me over to spend the night at her place. She said every comforting thing she could think of, and then some.

I laughed and shrugged. "Mo, I'm not sad." "You don't have to worry about me." Mo looked at me like she half believed it. "Really." Eventually she worked out that I truly wasn't.

I made plans with friends to go skiing, and I ran into Elle on the mountain. It was the first time the two of us had come face to face. She looked at me as we passed.

There was something amused in her eyes that I couldn't read, and I didn't go digging. I used my vacation days and took a trip with Mo.

That was the second month of silence between Reid and me. At home, seeing each other went as far as a glance before we both looked away and went back to whatever we were doing.

We were nearly at the point of having nothing left to say. Reid rarely started anything with me, about work or about the rest of it.

Every subject between us had always been one I brought up. Once I stopped bringing them up, there was naturally nothing to talk about. The third month. I was out having hot pot.

A server lost hold of the pot and the boiling broth went straight over me. The blisters came up instantly. It hurt badly enough that I wanted to lie down on the floor and roll.

And right then, of all people, I ran into Grant, one of Elle and Reid's friends. Elle and Reid's circles overlapped almost completely. Reid's friends were her friends.

Grant saw me, came over to say hello, and asked whether I was all right. I shook my head. I didn't want any more overlap with him, or with Elle.

At the last dressing change for the burn, I hadn't expected to find Reid at the hospital, there with Elle. I got the dressing done and went home. Chapter 5 Reid came home too.

His brow drew in a little as he looked me over. "Grant told me you got burned at a hot pot place last week?" "Something happens to you and you hide it from me?

You couldn't pick up a phone and call me?" A long silence. It was a while before I said anything. "Reid, let's just leave it." "Let's get divorced." He went still.

The color thinned out of his face, and whatever had been in it drained away at once