The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Oscar

I stood at the impound window and read the note until the letters stopped looking like words.

Come home. I miss you.

"It's evidence," I told Trish. I slid it into the envelope with my keys. "He paid an impound lot to tow my car so he could leave me a love letter. That goes in the binder."

That night I texted him for the second time.

Friday, noon. The cafe on Charles Street by the bookstore. Come alone.

I picked that cafe for one reason.

On Friday at lunch it was packed shoulder to shoulder with students and lawyers and moms with strollers.

I got there twenty minutes early and took the table in the middle of the room.

Trish sat at the counter by the window in sunglasses, pretending to read a paperback upside down.

Oscar walked in at twelve exactly.

Navy suit. Sandy hair cut short. No coat.

His wedding ring was on.

I'd never once seen him wear it.

He saw me looking at it and didn't take it off. I'll give him that.

"Hi," he said.

"I'm thirty-one weeks pregnant and homeless," I said. "Hi."

"You're not homeless. The apartment's yours."

"Your father-in-law was sitting in it."

He winced. It was real. I knew all his faces, and that one was real.

"I didn't know he'd do that."

"What did you know, Oscar?"

He leaned forward. He put his hands on the table, palms up, the way he did when he wanted me to put mine in them.

I kept mine around my tea.

"I love you," he said. "That part was never a lie."

"Which part was?"

"Beth."

"No, I want a list. Was it the part where you're single? The part where your family wanted you to marry a donor's daughter?" I tilted my head. "Oh, wait. You did marry her. Five years ago."

Oscar lowered his voice.

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