My Husband Told His Ex in French I'd Never Find Out novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Quiet Wife

Mireille from the end of the table tells Aimée in French that she knows she understands, and offers a way into the Nantucket house.

On Saturday morning I went to the farmers market in the Back Bay with my hand on my stomach and a list of things I couldn't eat anymore.

I was buying goat cheese when someone stopped beside me.

It was Mireille, the quiet wife from the end of my table.

She wore a plain gray coat and no makeup, and she was alone.

"Bonjour, Aimée," she said.

"Mireille. Hi."

She looked over her shoulder at the street. Then she looked at me.

"Je sais que tu comprends," she said.

I know that you understand.

The vendor handed me my change. I took it. I did not move my face.

"I'm sorry?" I said in English.

"Please." She said it in French, low and fast. "Don't do that to me. I have watched you for eight years."

She had a Québécois accent, flat and clipped, with every r pulled from the back of her throat.

Nobody at my table had ever called it pretty.

I put the cheese in my bag.

Then I answered her, and it was the first French I had spoken out loud in Boston since the night we got engaged.

"How long have you known?" I said.

My voice came out slow and warm, the way Mawmaw's did.

Mireille's whole body softened.

"Since the engagement dinner," she said. "I was sitting across from you. You answered his mother, and I saw Solène's face when you did."

"And you said nothing."

"I said nothing."

"For eight years."

"Yes."

I stepped away from the stall so the vendor couldn't hear us.

"Eight years," I said. "I sat at that table, and you watched them do it."

"I did."

"Why are you telling me now?"

She took a phone out of her coat and held it out.

On the screen was a photo of the Les Douze chat, and under it the line I had read on Wednesday.

Elle parle comme ça au lit aussi?

"My husband showed me this as a joke," she said. "He laughed. He thought I'd laugh."

"Did you?"

"I went into the bathroom and was sick." She put the phone away. "It is not only that. I am tired of being the one at the end of the table, Aimée. I did not know how to stop. Then you walked in with the étouffée and you smiled at them."

"I always smile."

"I know," she said. "I did, too."

We stood there. A man went by with a flat of tomatoes.

I wanted to be angry at her, and I was.

I also wanted to put my head down on her shoulder, because she was the first person in eight years who had looked at me and seen what I was.

I did neither.

"What do you want from me?" I said.

"Nothing. I want to give you something."

"What?"

"The Columbus Day weekend." She kept her voice low. "Les Douze goes to the Haverford house at Siasconset, on Nantucket, every year. The wives are told to come Saturday afternoon. The husbands go Friday."

"Preston told me he'd be in Hartford."

"Preston will be on the island with Solène from Friday morning. He has been going for a year."

A year.

I held onto the edge of the stall.

"The Saturday dinner is at seven," Mireille said. "I have a key to the house. Solène put me on the list because she thinks I'm too frightened to say anything."

"Are you?"

"Not as frightened as I was on Wednesday."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"I haven't decided anything," I said.

"I know. I'm not asking you to." She held out a slip of paper with a phone number on it. "Only, if you decide, I will meet you at the ferry."

I took the paper.

She started to go. Then she stopped and turned back.

"One more thing," she said. "It is why I came today and not next week."

I waited.

"Solène has an announcement for the whole table on Saturday night," she said. "She told every wife to arrive early."

"What kind of announcement?"

"She didn't say. She told the husbands to keep their phones in their pockets and to stand when she stands."

"Stand for what?"

"I don't know," Mireille said. "But Preston knows what the announcement is, Aimée. He has known for weeks."

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