While I Watched Their Kids, He Lived a Secret Life novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Grown-Up Hours
A TV screensaver opens a hidden album of eighteen months of trips taken on Maggie's babysitting weekends, and she says yes to the next favor.
The TV in my living room woke itself up while my neighbor's son was doing his math homework at my feet.
Neil had set it to play shared photo albums whenever nobody touched the remote.
Tonight it picked one I had never seen.
The title slid across the screen in white letters: Grown-Up Hours.
I put down the pencil I was holding and read the member list.
My husband Neil was first. Under him were my sister, my neighbor, and six more names from school pickups and Thursday dinners.
Every one of them had asked me for a favor in the past year.
The first photo showed my husband on a beach, holding up a plastic cup.
The date was the weekend he told me something urgent had come up at work.
I remembered it well. I ate dinner standing at the sink and ironed his shirts for Monday.
The second photo was a music festival, taken the day my neighbor called to say nobody could watch her son.
The third was a winery. Eight of them stood on a porch with their arms around each other, laughing.
That was the night I drove four children home, made two dinners and paid an electric bill Neil forgot.
I turned the volume to nothing.
"Is it a movie?" Kristen's son asked without looking up.
"Just a slideshow," I said. "Do number six."
He went back to his worksheet.
I kept clicking. Eighteen months of photos went by, and every one was a weekend that someone had asked me to give up.
In the festival pictures my sister Shannon wore a flower crown. In the next one Neil was holding it for her while she drank, and they were both laughing.
The day before that festival, Shannon had cried on the phone about how hard it was to raise Cody alone.
I had picked him up and sent her two hundred dollars so she wouldn't push herself.
Under the winery photo there was a comment thread.
Someone had written: "Why don't we ever invite Maggie?"
Neil had answered: "She'd turn it into a parent-teacher conference."
Then he added: "Anyway, somebody has to be home with the kids. She likes it."
I read that twice.
I didn't cry. My hands were steady, which surprised me.
At the top of the album a note was pinned. It said: "Saturday. Lake house, 9 a.m. Maggie has all the kids. She doesn't know yet."
So I took out my phone and photographed every screen. The member list, the dates, the comments, the note.
Then I switched the TV back to the family vacation slideshow and sat down beside the boy.
"Number six," I said. "What's seven times eight?"
"Fifty-six."
"Right."
Headlights crossed the front window at a quarter to eleven.
My neighbor Kristen came in smiling, with a grocery bag of cookies she'd baked for me.
"You are a lifesaver," she said, hugging me with one arm. "Let me take you to dinner. My treat, I mean it."
"Sure," I said.
I zipped her son's jacket and reminded him to take his homework out of his backpack in the morning.
She waved from the car as they pulled away, completely at ease.
Inside, Neil was on the couch with the game on and two beer cans on the coffee table. One was empty.
"Kid gone?"
"Yes."
"Want to order something? I'm starving."
A cheer came from the TV, and he turned back to it, swearing at the referee.
Fifteen minutes earlier I had watched him grin at a winery with his arm around my sister.
Now he was worried about takeout.
"I'm fine," I said. "I have work emails."
"On a Friday?" He laughed. "You need to learn to relax, Mags."
Of course he said that. Relaxing was easy when somebody else did the cooking and the calling and the remembering.
I went into the study and locked the door.
I didn't open my work email. I typed: divorce lawyer, Philadelphia, evening consultations.
The first firm handled marital property and joint accounts, and its page had a form for after-hours calls.
I filled it in. My name, the length of our marriage, our address, the name on the mortgage.
Under Reason for Consultation I wrote two sentences.
My husband has been spending joint money on something he hides from me.
I plan to end the marriage and need to know what I can lose.
None of the rest belonged on a form. The lawyer would want numbers, not what it felt like.
I booked a call for Monday afternoon. When the confirmation came, I saved it in a folder only I could open.
I called the folder Taxes.
My phone buzzed. It was Kristen.
"So sorry, can't do the park this weekend after all. Work training on Saturday. Kill me."
Three minutes ago she had thanked me at my own front door.
I pictured the message she was sending someone else. The lake house, the time, a line telling them not to say a word to Maggie.
I typed back: "No problem."
The phone rang almost at once, and the screen said Shannon.
"Hey, big sister." She sounded tired and sweet. "A client's coming in Saturday and I might be stuck at work all weekend. Could Cody stay with you? I'd drop him off at nine."
Nine, the same hour as the pinned note.
I thought about the flower crown, and my husband holding it.
I thought about asking her whether she'd had a nice time at the festival.
If I said it now, they would delete everything by morning.
"Sure," I said. "Bring him over."
So I said yes, and I started counting.
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