“Boarding the plane now, baby. Can’t wait to see you and the kids tonight. I love you.”
I opened the photo gallery. It was a digital scrapbook of a life I wasn’t part of. There he was, my husband, carving a pumpkin with a dark-haired teenage boy.
There he was, smiling on a beach, holding a little girl with missing front teeth. There he was in a hospital room, holding a newborn baby, kissing the sweaty forehead of the woman from the funeral.
Three children. Fourteen years.
I sat on the freezing concrete floor and scrolled until my thumbs cramped. I found an email folder labeled “Finances.” Inside were mortgage documents for a stunning four-bedroom house in a quiet suburb of Portland. He bought it in 2016 for $890,000.
It was fully paid off. The deed had two names on it: his, and Sarah Jenkins.
The ultimate knife to the chest was the youngest child. A little boy, bright-eyed and curly-haired. The photos showed his recent fourth birthday party. I sat there in the dark and did the math. Working backward from his birth date, I realized exactly when that child was conceived.
It was during our 20th wedding anniversary trip to Maui. I remembered that trip vividly. On the third day, my husband came down with what he claimed was severe food poisoning.
He insisted I go out and enjoy the island while he rested in the hotel room. I spent two days snorkeling and exploring by myself, checking in on him every few hours. While I was down at the beach feeling sorry for my sick husband, he was in our anniversary suite, face-timing his other family.
I didn’t sleep. I didn’t cry. I had moved completely past grief into a state of clinical, terrifying clarity.
At 6:00 AM, I found her contact in his phone. She was simply saved as “Home.”
I pressed dial and put the phone to my ear. It rang exactly one time before she picked up.
“Hello?” Her voice was shattered. She had been crying all night, too.
“Sarah,” I said. My voice was eerily calm. “My name is Claire. I am the woman whose arm you pulled away from yesterday at the funeral.”
