Not Your Wife, Not Your Maid

I, Evelyn Stone, found the videos while clearing old files from my husband’s computer.

At first I thought I had opened the wrong folder. Then I recognized Martin Grant’s face. The woman beneath him was Claire Weston, my best friend.

He taught literature at the university. Claire reviewed books for a living, and I'd watched them argue over novels at our dinner table for years. She knew where we kept the tea, which cupboard held the good plates, and how to make me laugh when Martin's silence filled the room. I had never wondered what the two of them did when I went to bed.

I clicked away, then clicked back. There were dozens of recordings, each marked with a date. I scrolled to the oldest. Martin looked younger, his hair still dark. So did Claire. At the edge of the frame sat a photograph from our wedding.

For forty years, Martin had told me he could no longer bear physical intimacy. It had begun after I gave birth to our son, Daniel. I had believed him. On nights when I wanted him to reach for me, I told myself that marriage meant more than that. I stayed beside him, cared for his parents, raised our child and learned to stop asking.

I remembered holding his hand when he first told me. He'd sounded so ashamed that I promised I would never make him feel less of a man. How many times had he let me comfort him for a lie?

He had never stopped wanting someone. He just hadn't wanted me.

I pushed back from the desk so hard the chair struck the wall. I sat on the floor until I could breathe again. Even then, I couldn't stop looking at the dates on the screen. Whenever he'd claimed to be working late at the university, whenever he'd told me he was too tired to hold me, where had he really been?

And why had he married me at all?

I remembered something his parents had said years ago: they hadn't approved of the woman he'd been seeing before me. I had never asked why. I picked up my phone and called his sister, Margaret.

"Evelyn? Is something wrong?" she asked.

"Why didn't your parents want Martin to marry the woman he dated before me?"

There was a pause. "Because she couldn't have children. You know how much they wanted a grandchild."

"Did you ever meet her?"

"Once. Mom wouldn't even let her into the front room. Martin sulked for a month, and then he brought you home." Margaret laughed a little. "We were all so relieved. You were such a sweet girl."

A sweet girl. Someone he could take home to his parents.

I gripped the edge of the desk. Margaret hadn't said the woman's name. Was she talking about Claire? Claire had made a point of keeping our friendship out of sight whenever Martin's parents visited. I had thought she simply disliked them. Now I wondered if the friendship itself had been another way for Martin to keep us both close.

Margaret was still speaking, but I couldn't make out the words. If Claire was the woman his parents had rejected, had Martin chosen me to give them a grandchild? Once Daniel was born, Martin had withdrawn from me and gone on seeing her. Whatever he'd intended on our wedding day, I knew exactly what his choices had cost me.

"Evelyn?" Margaret said. "Are you crying?"

I wiped my face, although she couldn't see me. "I'll call you later." I hung up before she could ask anything else. I wasn't ready to tell his family. I wasn't even ready to say the words aloud to myself.

My phone rang again. Daniel.

"Mom, can you make your rainbow ricotta gnocchi tonight? Oliver's been asking for it."

Oliver was my grandson. He and his parents would expect dinner when they arrived, just as they always did. Daniel never asked whether I was free. Last month I'd had a dentist appointment, and he'd asked me to move it because Oliver had a half day at school.

I ended the call without answering. Then I copied the folder onto a flash drive and put it in my purse. Whatever I decided, I wasn't going to give him the chance to delete it.