He Cheated With My Friend, My Parents Helped novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Glass Door
Jean sneaks to her parents' Thanksgiving with a pie and finds her husband and her pregnant best friend at their table, then signs the paper that ends her marriage. The garage door opens: Colin is home early.
At holiday dinnertime I stood outside my parents' glass back door, holding a pumpkin pie, and watched my father pour my husband a drink.
Colin was supposed to be on a work trip.
His text from that morning was still on my phone.
"Stuck out of town another night. Eat something warm for me."
Three years ago my father blinded Colin's left eye with one punch, the night the affair came out.
I had begged Colin not to call the police, and he had named his price.
I would never say the word divorce again, and I could see my parents one day a year, in December.
I said yes.
So I had spent three Thanksgivings alone in Seattle, and this year I had come to Bellevue to break the rule with a pie.
Through the glass I watched my father move a chess piece.
"That punch was too hard," he said, and he looked at Colin's left eye.
"It's a damn shame about that eye."
Colin waved it off.
"It's fine, Gordon. Without you two running interference, Jean would have divorced me for sure."
He laughed.
"This is better. Your house is our safe house now. A place for me and Cor to meet, and nobody suspects a thing."
My father laughed with him.
The pie was warm through the box against my hands.
Then the kitchen door opened and my mother came out, one arm around Simone.
Simone was pregnant.
She was seven months along, maybe more, and my mother held her the way she used to hold me on the stairs when I was sick.
She called the men in for dinner.
They looked like a family.
I had no hope left, and it went in that one moment.
They sat down at the dining table, and I could not hear them through the glass.
I could see the food, though, a whole spread, with serving dishes down the middle.
Simone reached for the bread with her left hand.
She was left-handed, like my father.
I had joked for years that the two of them matched.
My father stood, tapped his glass for quiet, and took out his phone.
A second later, my own phone began to ring.
It was a FaceTime call.
I backed up against the cold wall, wiped my face with my sleeve, and answered with a shaking thumb.
My father's face filled the screen.
"Jeanie, Happy Thanksgiving. Have you eaten?"
My mother leaned in beside him.
"You're home alone again, aren't you? This is our fault, honey. We never should have lost our tempers."
"Now you don't even have anyone with you on the holidays."
They said some version of this every year.
By the end of every call I felt like I was the one who had nearly sent them to prison.
I made my voice level and smiled.
"If it's only the two of you, why did you make so much food?"
My father paused.
My mother took the phone from him.
"It's a holiday. The house is so big and so empty, and I made a few extra dishes, that's all."
"Don't worry about us. Christmas is coming, and we'll see each other then."
I looked past her, into the house.
Colin and Simone sat on the far side of the table.
"Mom, turn the camera around," I said. "I want to see what you made."
Nobody at the table moved.
My mother's face closed.
"My battery's about to die. I'm hanging up."
The screen went black.
Inside, she told everyone to eat.
They passed the serving dishes to Simone, and she smiled and waved them away, because she already had plenty.
Colin bent his head and peeled the shrimp on her plate himself.
My stomach clenched.
I took pictures through the glass, one after another, until my hands would not hold the phone still.
Then I turned and walked away.
On the Lyft ride home I kept hoping I had misread it.
But the ache in my chest was real, and so were the pictures.
At home I opened the safe in the study and took out the agreement.
Eight years ago Colin had put it in my hands himself.
"Jean, I will never divorce you," he had said. "I'm signing first to hold myself to being the husband you deserve. But it's your way out too, if I ever let you down."
It said that everything we owned would be split in half.
Both our lawyers had read it.
Only my signature was missing.
Three years ago, the first time I found out, I had taken it out of the safe and my hand shook too hard to sign.
Tonight the doorbell rang before I could start.
I put the agreement away and went down.
A delivery driver handed me a heavy bag.
"This was ordered for you by Gordon and Florence Ellingwood," he said. "Please confirm here."
I signed for it and carried it in.
It was my mother's cooking, and every dish was spicy, like every holiday.
I used to think my parents' tastes had changed.
It had never crossed my mind that they were cooking for Simone.
I got to the sink and dry-heaved, then dumped every container into the trash.
I went back up to the study, opened the safe, and took out the agreement again.
This time I didn't wait.
I picked up Colin's pen and signed my name.
Downstairs, the garage door started to rise.
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