“Leave!” Sarah screamed, tears finally streaming down her face. “Get out of here right now!”
The woman backed toward the door, still muttering something, but Sarah couldn’t hear her. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. The door slammed shut, the bell above it tinkling pathetically. Sarah was alone in the middle of her store.
The boxes of inventory, the neatly arranged folders, the bright notebook covers—it all suddenly seemed foreign and meaningless. She lifted her head and looked at a framed photo on the wall—a picture of her and Stephen taken two years ago at the store’s grand opening. He had his arm around her shoulders, both of them smiling.
“At our wedding,” she whispered, wiping away her tears. “On our actual wedding day.”
She stood up, unsteady on her feet, and mechanically began unpacking the boxes. Her hands moved on their own, but her mind was miles away. Every detail of that day came flooding back with a new, painful clarity. Stephen had stepped away for a bit. Said he had to make a call. She hadn’t thought anything of it; it seemed so normal for him to have business to attend to, even on that day. But he was with someone else.
Sarah finished unpacking the last box without realizing how she’d done it. She closed out the register, turned off the lights in the back room. With trembling hands, she grabbed her keys and checked the lock on the front door three times.
Her car was waiting in the parking lot. Sarah got in and sat frozen, staring into the darkness. Her phone lay on the passenger seat. Not a single call, not a single text from Stephen. Just like always.
She started the engine and drove home. The twenty-minute drive was a blur; she didn’t remember a single turn. She only snapped out of it when the car stopped in front of their house—a two-story home on the edge of town. She didn’t get out right away. She just sat there, gripping the steering wheel, trying to figure out how to go on. What would she say to Stephen? How could she even look him in the eye?
Finally, she went inside. The house was empty, dark, and cold. Stephen wasn’t home. She walked into the kitchen, flipped on the light, and put the kettle on. She took out a mug, a tea bag. She sat at the table and stared out the window as dusk settled. The minutes crawled by. The kettle boiled, and she made tea but never touched it. She picked up her phone—the screen was blank. No calls, no texts.
An hour passed. Sarah was still at the table, her hands wrapped around the cold mug. A second hour passed. She checked her phone: 11:00 PM. Still nothing from Stephen. She wanted to scream. To break something. To call him and demand an explanation. But she just sat there, because she didn’t know where to begin. She didn’t know how to tear down what she had spent eight years building.
And somewhere across town, Stephen was going about his business, with no idea that his world was about to come crashing down.
Sarah heard the sound of a car in the driveway close to midnight. Her heart seized. She was still sitting at the kitchen table, a third cold mug of tea in front of her. Her hands were numb from gripping her phone, waiting for a message that never came.
The key turned in the lock. The door opened. She heard footsteps in the hall—steady, calm. Stephen clearly had no idea what was waiting for him.
“Hey, honey!” He appeared in the kitchen doorway, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair. “Sorry I’m late.”
Sarah said nothing, just stared at him. After eight years of marriage, she thought she knew this man. She thought she could read him like an open book. But the man standing before her was a stranger.
Stephen walked to the sink, poured a glass of water, and drank it in one gulp. Then he turned to his wife with a smile.
“I think I found investors to expand the business. Can you believe it? They’re ready to put in serious money. We could open two more stores, maybe even three. Isn’t that amazing?”
His enthusiasm was like a knife in her gut. Sarah felt everything inside her coil with pain and rage.
“I know everything,” she said quietly, her eyes never leaving his.
Stephen froze, the empty glass in his hand.
“What?” He looked at his wife, and the smile slowly faded from his face.
“I know everything,” Sarah repeated, louder this time, her voice trembling.
He set the glass on the counter and frowned.
“What do you know?” There was surprise in his tone, but Sarah thought she caught a flicker of alarm.
She stood up, her hands pressed against the table to steady herself. The words were caught in her throat, but she forced them out.
“About your disgusting affairs! I know you were with a waitress on our wedding day!” Her voice broke into a shout. “I know Maria is pregnant with your child!”
Silence. A long, suffocating silence. Stephen stood motionless, and Sarah watched his eyes dart from side to side, as if searching for an escape route. He licked his lips.
“Who told you this nonsense?”
“Nonsense?” Sarah cried out, gripping the table. “The mother of those girls came to see me. She told me everything, Stephen! About Kate, the waitress from our wedding. About how you took her into a closet while I was dancing with our guests. And then, six years later, you moved on to her younger sister. She’s only twenty! How could you?”
Stephen backed against the wall, and she saw something flash across his face. Fear? Annoyance? He opened his mouth but said nothing.
“What, nothing to say?”
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