His Other Wife novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: The Poor Idiot

Jonathan admits he married Clarissa at the courthouse and Ellie in church, Noah asks for Clarissa to live with them, and Ellie replies to the viral thread with her name and his.

Nobody in the room moved.

The nurse froze with a blood pressure cuff in her hands.

On the other side of the curtain, the woman in the next bed turned her TV off.

So even my six-year-old knew.

Everybody knew except me.

"Jonathan," I said. "How long were you going to keep lying?"

He looked at the nurse, then at the curtain.

"Can we not do this here?"

"You won't order a new certificate because the clerk would pull up the marriage you already have. Right?"

He opened his mouth to deny it.

Then he looked at Noah, who was staring up at him, waiting.

He sat back in the chair and let out a long breath.

"How did you find out?"

That was it.

Not "I'm sorry." Not "it isn't true."

How did you find out.

"Yes, fine, Clarissa and I are legally married," he said. "So what? Whose bed do I sleep in? Whose kid do I read to every night?"

He leaned in and dropped his voice.

"It's a piece of paper, Ellie. You got hit by a car and the first thing you do is make a scene about a piece of paper? In a hospital? I'm embarrassed for you."

The nurse set the cuff down and quietly left the room.

He had lied to me for eight years, and he was the one who was embarrassed.

"You made me a fool," I said. My voice cracked in the middle. "Eight years, Jonathan."

He switched faces like flipping a light on.

He took my hand in both of his, soft and patient.

"I never wanted to hurt you. You have to understand what happened."

"Clarissa got into a conservatory in Vienna. My mother said a woman who leaves the country for a piano isn't wife material."

"So you proposed to me," I said.

He winced, like I was being unfair.

"Then Vienna fell through. And she found out about you."

"She swallowed a bottle of her mother's sleeping pills, Ellie. I was the one who found her."

I didn't say anything.

"The invitations were already out. Three hundred people. My parents paid for everything. What was I supposed to do, tell them the bride had changed?"

"So you married her quietly on a Friday," I said. "And me in a church on Saturday."

"Nobody got hurt!" He actually sounded proud. "I didn't leave you, and she didn't die. Do you know how hard that was to pull off?"

He smiled at me like he was waiting for applause.

"She has a piece of paper in a drawer. You have my whole life. So tell me, what exactly did you lose?"

I looked at the man I had sold my grandmother's ring for.

I didn't know him at all.

I pulled my hand out of his and slapped him across the face.

The crack of it was loud in the little room.

Behind the curtain, the woman in the next bed gasped.

"Eight years I've been your mistress and didn't even know it," I said. "And Noah doesn't have a legal father."

Jonathan touched his cheek.

Then he almost laughed, like he was relieved it was only one slap.

"Don't be so dramatic. Clarissa doesn't want kids. She's never going to go through a pregnancy. Noah is the only child I'll ever have. Legitimate or not, he gets everything."

He straightened his coat.

"I've been good to you for eight years. Drop this, and we keep being the family everyone thinks we are. Nobody is ever going to look us up in a county database, Ellie."

Professor Jonathan Kendrick.

Winner of the Aldridge Prize for composition.

The man the whole university lined up to shake hands with.

Noah scrambled over and grabbed my good hand.

"Mom, I really like Aunt Clarissa. She lets me play her big piano. Can she come live with us now?"

He looked up at me with his father's gray eyes.

"Dad said I couldn't tell you before. But now you know, so can you just say yes?"

My son was six, and he had been keeping his father's secret longer than he'd known how to tie his shoes.

I had lost two pints of blood bringing him into the world.

"If you say no," Noah said, pushing out his lip, "then you're not my mom anymore."

I laughed.

It came out small and strange.

"Okay," I said. "Then I'm not."

It was the worst thing I have ever said to him.

I could not make myself take it back.

Noah burst into tears.

Jonathan scooped him up and glared at me like I had hit the child.

"This is what you've done," he said. "Get some rest. We'll talk when you're thinking straight."

He carried Noah out.

The door swung shut behind them.

I lay there listening to their footsteps go down the hall.

Then I reached for my phone on the tray table.

The screen was cracked, but it still worked.

I opened the thread.

Clarissa's comment was at the top, at fifty-one thousand likes now.

"Poor idiot has no idea she's the mistress."

I tapped reply.

I attached the screen recording. All eight years of her posts.

Then I attached a photo of the teardrop earrings, still in my ears.

I typed one line.

"Hi. I'm the poor idiot. My name is Ellie, and his name is Professor Jonathan Kendrick."

My thumb hovered over the button.

Down the hall, I could still hear Noah crying.

I pressed send.

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