My husband was cheating on me.
He loved another woman — one who did not bear my name.
I would be alone, because I would lose him.
Only now, it wouldn’t be because of his infidelity. The choice to be alone would not be made by me standing tall, demanding more, not accepting his affair.
Instead, he would fade from the Earth and I would remain, mourning him along with his other lover.
Maybe I cried because, though I had a plan, I secretly prayed he would thwart it. Perhaps I half-envisioned me leaving him, chin held high as I walked away, and half-envisioned him begging me to stay, promising to relinquish his love affair, for our marriage meant more to him than she ever could.
Regardless, it didn’t matter now.
Now, I had a cheating husband who would never learn my knowledge of his infidelity.
Because now, I would never tell him I knew.
What would be the objective? With a blow as hard as terminal cancer, was there really any point to leaving him now, to letting him fight the final weeks of his life alone? Was there any point to telling him I knew about the other woman he touched, other than satisfying my need to feel in control, to shove my proof in his face and say Ha! I know what you did!?
Death has a funny way of putting life into perspective for us. And what had once been so important to me — that need for vindication I held so tightly on my drive home — didn’t seem to matter now. There was really only one thing that did.
I loved him.
That emotion was easy to pin down.
And because it was the only thing I could truly grasp, I held onto it tightly, knuckles white and aching. Carlo Mancini was my husband, and I, his wife. He was my everything — and that was still true, regardless of who else he’d shared a bed with.
So, I pulled back from his embrace, and kissed his lips — lips I always thought would be only mine to kiss — and I told him I loved him. I told him I was there. I held his hand and told him that, come what may, he had me by his side.
And by his side I stayed, until the very day he died.
Somewhere in that warped, whirling span of time, I think a part of me died, too.
I watched cancer wither my strong, commanding husband into nothing but skin and bones. I watched his eyes grow hollow, his lips ashen, his hands weaken where I held them in mine. Every day that I looked in the mirror, I watched my own eyes change, a hardness settling in. I watched a twenty-nine-year-old girl become an old woman in just weeks — weeks that felt like years, but flew by like days.
And on the day of his funeral, I watched a girl younger and prettier than me mourn him from the back row of our church.
She cried the same tears that I did, though I swore her heart was in more pain than mine. Because she had the satisfaction of being the other woman, of being the one he couldn’t live without — so much so that he was willing to risk his marriage, his reputation, his life that he had built. She knew without a doubt that she had been his world, that she had been the last face in his mind before the light was extinguished and he faded off into nothing.
I didn’t have that same comfort.
I had casseroles from neighbors and life insurance policies from lawyers and a house full of things that smelled like him. I had a down payment on a condo downtown that I’d secured, thinking I would be walking away from him, away from his infidelity. I had an empty hole in my chest where a young heart used to beat, where love used to grow like flowers, now turned to weeds.
I had a secret to keep, one that would eat me alive every second it dwelled in the dark, unspoken depths of my mind.
And I had a plan.
To preserve control over my future, over my heart, my soul, my well-being, over the life I would lead after my husband — I had to eliminate the factors that were uncontrollable. It was just that simple.
And right there, in that first-row pew, with my dead, cheating husband’s mother’s hand in mine, I made one simple plan, with one simple rule.
Never fall in love again.
It was more than just a plan, more than just a goal. It was a promise.
And it was one I vowed to keep.
Gemma
eight months later
“No.”
I only had one word for my best friend-slash-boss as we flowed with the crowd spilling out of Soldier Field, the warm, early-September air sweeping over us. Despite the fact that Belle and I had sweat through most of the Chicago Bears preseason game until the sun finally went down, I still smiled, reveling in the last few weeks of summer.
Soon, the heat would fade, and the Illinois winter would hit with all the subtlety of a Mack truck.
I was in no rush to be greeted with the kind of cold that hurts your face. Still, while I would miss summer, it was fall that was my favorite season. It had always held a special place in my heart for many reasons — my birthday, Halloween, pumpkin-spiced everything, and, most of all, football.
“Shut up. You don’t get to say no to me,” Belle snapped. She swept her long, strawberry-blonde hair off her shoulder before looping her arm through mine. “In our friendship, I’m always right. And trust me when I say I’m right about this.”
“I’m not ready to date, Belle. Drop it.”
“I didn’t say you had to date,” she stated, matter-of-factly, as she held up one black-lacquered fingernail. “I said you need to get laid. And this, my friend, is literally every man’s fantasy.” She gestured to the stadium we had just walked out of. “Free tickets to a football game and a hot chick to bang at the end of the night — with no strings attached?” She shook her head. “Honestly, I wish I had thought of this first. It’s genius.”
“I didn’t think of anything,” I reminded her. “I bought season passes for my husband to give to him on his thirty-fifth birthday.”
“Your cheating husband,” she reminded me, steering us left toward the street lined with sports bars. And though my face didn’t show a single sign of weakness at those words, my stomach tightened into a knot.
Belle was literally the only person who would ever know that Carlo was unfaithful, other than the woman he cheated on me with — and not even she knew that I knew. I’d only told Belle after Carlo had passed away, mainly because I knew she’d speed up the process of his death before the good Lord could take him if she found out about his infidelity.
Belle was the kind of best friend who loved fiercely. She was honest with me always — bluntly so — and she never let me get too comfortable in my little land of control. Just when she saw me slipping into any kind of complacency, she would challenge me.
I hated her as much as I loved her for that.
Still, while I knew I’d need someone to talk to about Carlo’s infidelity, someone who knew the whole story, sometimes I regretted telling her. Where I was all about suppressing, boxing difficult emotions away and focusing on tasks I could complete, Belle was a processor.
She was not the kind of girl to let something go.
Especially this kind of something.
“And I say this with the utmost respect for you and him and all of God’s creatures,” she continued, drawing a cross over her shoulders with her free hand. “But he’s not here anymore, Gemma. May he rest in peace.” She paused. “And also, be castrated in the name of Jesus, amen.”
“Belle.”