Chapter 3
Story: My Father Called Me With My Husband Still on the Pavement — Then the Other Woman Spoke
I heard the click of the speaker turning off, and then my father's voice, low and direct: "I'm walking her to the coffee shop. The one with the blue awning. Give me ten minutes."
"Okay," I said.
"Marla." He paused. "Are you okay?"
"No," I said. "I don't know what I am."
"Ten minutes," he said again. "Then I'll call you back."
The line went dead.
I stood in my kitchen for a long moment, the phone still in my hand, the silence pressing in from all sides. The pasta sauce was still bubbling on the stove. The wine was still open. The empty glass was still sitting on the counter, waiting for something to fill it.
I set the phone down with shaking hands and walked to the stove. I turned off the burner. I stood there, staring at the pot, watching the bubbles subside, thinking about absolutely nothing.
Then I walked to the window and looked out at the street.
Our street. Our house. Our life. Eight years of mornings and evenings, of little routines and quiet moments, of building something together. And Paul had been out there, holding another woman's hand, telling her I was already gone.
The phone buzzed. I looked down.
It was my father. Ten minutes had passed.
"Dad," I said.
"Marla." His voice was heavy. "I've got her. We're sitting in the coffee shop. I've got a table in the back, and she's telling me everything."
"She's telling you?" I said.
"Everything." He paused. "Marla, I want you to listen to this. I'm putting you on speaker again."
I heard the click, and then Kira's voice came through, smaller than before but steadier, like someone who had decided to stop lying.
"I met Paul at a conference," she said. "Nine months ago. He was giving a presentation, and I was there with my company's marketing team. He came up to me afterward — he said he liked my questions, said I was sharp, said we should grab coffee."
I listened.
"We started seeing each other a couple of weeks later. He told me he was divorced. Said it had been finalized about a year before — that he had been married for a long time and it didn't work out, and he was finally feeling ready to date again."
I swallowed.
"He showed me his apartment," she said. "He said it was his apartment. He never once mentioned a house. He never once mentioned you. He said — he said you'd moved to another city. He said you'd both decided to move on."
"Another city," I repeated.
"He said you were in Seattle."
"I'm in the same city we've been in for eight years," I said. "The same house. The same kitchen. The same life."
There was a long pause.
"He told me you were in Seattle," Kira said again, her voice smaller now. "He told me you were happy. He told me you'd both agreed to it."
"He told us both different things," I said.
The silence on the line was heavy.
"What does this mean?" Kira asked.
"I don't know yet," I said. "But I'm going to find out."
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