“Greta! Where’s your school skirt? It needs to be washed,” I call out from the laundry room when I can’t find it. She comes running in a few moments later, wearing her school skirt, a pink t-shirt, sunglasses, a sparkling scarf wrapped around her neck, and a pair of my Manolo black peep-toe heels.
“My, my, and what do we have here?” I ask her.
“I’m a Bratz doll,” she declares with her hands on her hips.
I smile at her. “You look fabulous, poppet, but I need to wash that skirt. Can you go find a regular skirt to wear instead?”
“But it’s not the same. I need it,” she whines.
I give her my best mom glare, and she sighs, stripping it off and passing it over.
“Thank you.” I toss it into the washer with the rest of the clothes and grab the laundry soap. I pour it in and close the lid before turning it on.
Greta waves like the princess she is and trots off out of the room in her underwear with my heels clopping against our expensive hardwood floor. I cringe, but let her go. Leo hates it and is always asking her to take them off. But once he catches sight of her pleading puppy dog eyes and her ridiculous outfits, he always gives in.
I hear my phone ringing in the kitchen and hurry from the laundry room to answer it. My mom’s name flashes across the screen, and I can’t help but feel a little nervous as I answer it. She doesn’t know how bad things have gotten between Leo and me. She adores him, and she’s so happy that I ended up with the life I did. It might cause her to worry.
“Hello?” I sing, trying to put some pep into my tone.
“Baby girl! How are you?”
“Good, how are you? How’s Taylor?”
Funnily enough, my mother and Leo’s mother are best friends. Well, if you can call it that. They’re total opposites and used to hate each other when we first got together, but when Leo Sr. passed away four years ago, everything changed. My mother took one look at the bunch of fake friends at his wake and took it upon herself to help Taylor during that time. If not as a friend, then at least as something more real and not as forced as all the well-wishing but quick to disappear socialites who Taylor had thought were her friends.
Taylor didn’t forget and never let her go. They travel together several times a year on Taylor’s fortune. Even though my mom put up a fight, feeling like she couldn’t possibly leech off her like that, Taylor didn’t give her much of a choice. They’re outrageous and kind of dramatic when they get together, but we love them. And I’m glad they’ve found each other.
“Oh, being her typical high-maintenance self. It took her two hours to get ready yesterday morning. I’m telling you the truth. Two freaking hours, my girl. It’s a record, I tell you.”
I hear Taylor in the background. “Oh, shut your mouth. You’re lucky I decided to get ready at all. I was having a terrible hair day, Dahlia!” she yells out to me.
Smiling, I lean forward over the counter onto my elbows.
“Do you know how much living you could do in two hours?” Mom asks Taylor. “We aren’t getting any younger, you old bat.”
“Renee, if I had shown myself in public with my hair looking like it did, I wouldn’t want to live anyway,” she says matter-of-factly.
“Ladies,” I interrupt with a laugh. “Should I go and let you two finish this argument without me listening in?”
“Oh, we’re not arguing, dear,” Taylor interjects.
“Whatever gave you that idea?” my mom asks, sounding perplexed.
God. My hand dives into my hair as I try not to roll my eyes. I pull the phone away from my ear. “Greta! Charlie! Grandma and Grandma are on the phone,” I call out, trying to wrap this up.
I hear them muttering to each other. “Look what you’ve done, Renee. She doesn’t want to talk to us now.”
“Me? It’s not my fault. She’s a busy woman; you can’t hold her up with your incessant gibberish all evening.”
Greta rounds the corner into the kitchen, hurrying to take the phone from my hand.
“Hi, Grandmamas!” Her sweet voice no doubt has them in smiling fits. They dote on these kids like nothing else. I busy myself with getting a salad prepped to have with our steak and potatoes. Getting the meat out of the fridge, I turn on the stove and watch Charlie sulk into the kitchen. I’m not fooled, though. He loves his grandmas; he just doesn’t like to look too excited.
The kids finish talking twenty minutes later, and I say a quick goodbye, telling them that our dinner is almost ready and that I need to go.
After it’s all finished, I place everything on the island in the kitchen. I’m about to sit down when I hear the telltale sound of Leo’s Aston Martin as it rumbles into the garage. He’s home in time to eat dinner with us for once. Huh.
“Um, okay, guys. Let’s move this to the dining table.”
Charlie grumbles. “But I’m too hungry to move.”
I give him a raised brow, and he reluctantly grabs his plate, following us into the dining room. I return to the kitchen, grabbing the salad and another plate for Leo’s seat at the head of our long oak dining table. He walks into the kitchen just as I’m leaving it, but I don’t stop. He knows where we’ll be.
“Daddy!” Greta sings when he enters the room behind me, taking off his suit jacket and laying it over the armchair in the corner of the room. He walks over to her, kissing her, and moving the sunglasses from her eyes to the top of her head. He scruffs Charlie’s hair affectionately, who gives him a quiet hello. I watch it all out of my peripheral vision as I cut up Greta’s steak for her and pass it over. He doesn’t touch me, of course. But at this stage, I’d probably fall out of my chair in shock if he did.
He sits down, and I eat in silence as the kids tell him about their day at school and what their grandmas are up to on their vacation.
“Grandma Renee said she saw a real-life seal! In the ocean!” Greta says with awe.
Her father, to his credit, widens his eyes a little. “No kidding. A real one?”
He almost, almost smirks when she nods frantically.
“Who cares, you can see them in the zoo anyway,” Charlie says to his plate.
I lower my cutlery, frowning at him. “Charlie …”
“What?” he mumbles and then glances at Leo’s hard stare and shrugs. “Sorry.”
We finish eating, and I head right to the kitchen to start cleaning up while the kids race to the living room after their father to watch TV and have dessert. When I’m done, I call them upstairs for their showers and tuck them both into bed.
“Mommy,” Greta calls right when I’m about to head down the hall to take a shower.
I turn around and walk back into her room. “What’s up?”
She smiles up at me. “I love you.”
I tilt my head, smiling back at her and saying the words she wants to hear next. “Not as much as I love you. Good night, poppet.”
“G’night.” She rolls over onto her stomach, and I walk down the hall, grabbing some clean clothes and closing myself in the bathroom.
Once under the hot spray, I try to let it wash some of the tension away. I shouldn’t be tense when my husband comes home. I shouldn’t grow nervous every time I hear his car pull in. But I am, and I do.
This shit needs to stop. Lola’s right. I can’t keep doing this.
I turn the shower off and dry myself before getting dressed.
Resolved, I head back down stairs and find him in the living room, still in his work clothes as he flicks through his phone with the TV on some sports channel in the background. I tug out my kitting basket, grabbing my needles and the cardigan that needs finishing before trying to get comfortable on the opposite couch.
It takes about ten minutes, but I finally gain enough courage to ask, “Can we talk? Please?”
He taps away at his phone, not even so much as glancing up at me.
“What about?” he mumbles distractedly.
I clear my throat a little. “Well, us.”
He doesn’t even blink. I hear the email notification go off on his phone as he continues to stare down at it.
“Leo …” I warn quietly.
“What?” he snaps. “There’s nothing we need to discuss. We’ve been over this.”
I know, but fuck it, one last shot, right? Before I allow myself to completely give up.
“That’s the thing, though. We haven’t, not really. Can’t you feel this?” I ask, feeling my heart try to climb up my throat when he continues to ignore me. “This isn’t right. It’s getting worse, and I don’t know what else I can do, what I’ve done wrong, or how I can fix it. Not when you won’t even look at me most days.”
He rights himself on the couch, running a hand through his hair and making it stand on end in that sexy way it does. But he stays quiet, and I think he’ll ignore me again until he says, “You know you haven’t done anything wrong because there’s nothing wrong, Christ. Stop trying to find something that isn’t even there.” He stands, and I watch as he leaves the room while growling at me, “I’ve given you two beautiful children, a beautiful home, and a beautiful life, what more do you want from me?”
You, I almost say. I just want you.
But feeling my heart slam violently against my chest, I shock myself by saying something else entirely. “I’m having an affair.”
He freezes in the doorway. Something, at last.
I don’t know what made me say it, especially when it isn’t exactly true. But it could be. And I think I want him to realize that. To realize he could lose me. Because maybe if he does, he’ll put a stop to this insanity.
He doesn’t turn around when he finally speaks. His voice is quiet and as cutting as glass, slicing into my trembling skin. “Do whatever you want. We’re not getting divorced.”
Then he’s gone, and I’m left staring at the wall as tears cloud over my vision before spilling silently down my cheeks.