The Wife He Left Behind novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Power Team
Cassia sees her husband's Singapore photos with his assistant, calls him and gets no video and a smooth line; Camille texts that he'll ring her Sunday.
At six that Tuesday morning, my husband's company posted eleven photos from its team dinner overseas.
By my afternoon break, four hundred strangers had commented on them.
I read them in the hallway outside the courtroom, with the pen still clipped to my cardigan and an ultrasound print folded in my bag.
My husband was in the third photo.
He had his head turned toward a woman, laughing, and her hand rested on his arm.
I knew her. Camille Fenn, his assistant, who had sent me a thank-you card in March when the company moved her out to join him.
I swiped to the fourth photo.
It showed a rooftop table, the city lit up behind it.
Camille leaned toward him with an easy smile, her shoulder almost touching his.
My husband, Tobias, was looking down at something on her phone.
Of course he was. Her phone, not mine.
He hadn't answered one of my messages since yesterday morning.
I had sent him four.
I opened the comments, because I had learned nothing.
Someone wrote: Power team.
Then: Tobias and Camille always look so sharp together.
Then a row of fire emojis, and a woman who said she'd follow those two anywhere.
Forty people had liked that one.
I stood very still while a bailiff walked past me carrying a box of exhibits.
Then I put the phone away and went back in and typed up a custody hearing for three hours without making a single mistake.
That is the job.
You write down every word, exactly as it was said, and you don't get to have an opinion about it.
At home I put the ultrasound print on the kitchen table and set my phone next to it.
Twelve weeks. A small curved shape, and the date printed in the corner.
I had planned to tell him on a video call tonight. I had practiced it in the car.
It was 6:40 in Seattle, which made it almost ten in the morning in Singapore.
I called.
It rang nine times.
"Cas. Hey." His voice was warm and a little rushed. "Bad moment, I'm in the middle of something."
"Turn your camera on."
"The line's terrible. The wifi in this hotel is a joke, I'll just lose you."
That was what he had said in April.
It was what he had said in June, and again in August.
I hadn't seen his face on a screen since spring.
"I saw the photos," I said.
"The team dinner?" He laughed, easily. "That's work, babe. Everybody's there for that."
"You're holding her phone."
"I was looking at a shipping schedule. Camille's like a sister to me, Cas. You know that."
"You haven't answered me in a day."
"Time difference. I'm buried. I swear I'm buried."
I looked at the print on the table.
I had the sentence ready. I'm pregnant, and it's twelve weeks.
"Don't read the comments," Tobias said. "People are idiots. They'd say anything for a like."
Behind him a woman said his name, soft and close.
"One minute," he told her. Not me. Her.
Then he came back to me. "I have to run. Love you. Talk soon."
He hung up before I answered.
I sat there with the phone in my hand.
My throat was tight, so I went through the call line by line, as I would a transcript.
What had been said. What had been left out.
He had not asked how I was.
He had not asked about the house, or the leaking pipe, or whether my back still hurt.
He had called me babe, which he never did.
I put my hand flat on my stomach.
I didn't tell him.
So I kept it to myself, and I started a list.
I screenshotted all eleven photos and every comment, and I saved the call log, and I wrote down the time he picked up and the time he hung up.
My phone buzzed on the table.
It wasn't him.
It was a number I had saved last spring, under the name Camille, assistant.
Hi Cassia! It's Camille. Tobias asked me to let you know he's in back to back calls until Sunday. I'll make sure he rings you. Please don't worry, he's just so tired lately xx
I read it three times.
Then I looked at the clock on the stove.
He had hung up less than two minutes ago.
And he had asked her, not me, to tell me not to call.
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