“Just us girls,” she said.
I let her in.
I made coffee instead of opening the wine.
It was two in the afternoon.
We sat at my kitchen table.
My table.
In my house.
She looked around at the photos on the wall.
Our wedding.
The kids.
Nineteen years of a life.
And she smiled at me.
A strange smile.
“You have a lovely home,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to take Daniel from you.”
I laughed.
It just came out.
Because surely, surely she was joking.
Nobody says that.
Nobody sits at your table and says that.
But she wasn’t laughing.
She was watching me.
Calm as still water.
“You should start getting your paperwork ready,” she said.
“The divorce kind.”
“Nineteen years is a long time. Men get bored. They always do.”
I set my coffee down very carefully.
My hand was steady.
I was proud of that later.
“Camille,” I said. “I think you should go home.”
She stood.
She smoothed her dress.
“I’m not a cruel person,” she said. “I’m just honest.”
“I know what I want. And I always get it.”
Then she left.
She let herself out.
And I sat at my table for a long time.
Not crying.
Thinking.
When Daniel came home that night, I told him everything.
Word for word.
I watched his face.
He didn’t get flustered.
He didn’t overreact.
He got very quiet.
Then he said, “She said that? In our kitchen?”
“At our table.”
He sat down across from me.
“Okay,” he said. “So what do you want to do?”
And right there is the difference between my husband and the man Camille imagined he was.
Camille thought Daniel was a prize to be won.
A thing to be taken.
A bored man waiting for someone new.
She never once imagined he was a partner.
That he and I were a team.
That whatever she threw at him, he’d bring straight to me.
“For now,” I said, “we watch. We wait. We don’t react.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. She wants a reaction. We give her nothing.”
Daniel nodded slowly.
