The Wife He Tried to Erase

I found the underwear first.

Black lace, wedged under the passenger seat of my husband, Nate's truck. Not mine.

I held it between two fingers like it might bite me.

My hands went cold before my brain caught up. I set it on the dash. Popped the glovebox. Nothing. Then I remembered the dash cam.

Three days back. Timestamp outside the fermentation barn, past midnight.

I hit play.

Nate's voice first, low. Then a woman's, breathless, laughing into something that wasn't a laugh. The camera caught motion, his hand fisted in dark hair, her back arching against the driver's door, fabric hitting the floor mat.

I should have stopped it there.

I didn't.

When it was over, she was crying into his chest. He held her like she was something breakable.

"You'll be fine," he said. His voice cracked on fine.

"Don't." She grabbed his collar. "Don't you dare say that to me right now."

"I mean it. God, I mean it." He pressed his forehead to hers. "You know why anyone works this hard? So they get to sleep next to the person they actually want. I watched you walk through security last week and it felt like someone carved a piece out of me."

"Then why let me go?"

"Your parents are done waiting. And I can't give you what you need. Not yet."

My phone screen blurred. I wiped my eyes with the back of my wrist and kept watching.

I scrubbed forward two days. Nate alone in the cab this time, phone propped on the dash, a friend's voice on speaker.

"You good?" the friend asked. "Back in family-man mode?"

"Getting there." A lighter clicked. Smoke, then a long exhale. "That stuff outside is just noise. Vivian's the one I actually built something with."

"Then keep it that way. Don't let her catch on before things cool off with Chloe."

Nate laughed. Short. Tired.

"Truth is, Vivian and I, we've never really synced. Not once. Not in bed. Not anywhere."

"So why marry her?"

"If I'd never gone down that road with her, I'd be a hell of a lot happier right now."

I sat in the driveway a long time after the recording ended.

Ten years, and that was the sentence he chose. Not once. Not anywhere.

The friend's voice again: "So why not just leave now?"

"Too messy. The winery's still tangled up in both our names." A pause, the strike of the lighter again. "Let's get the baby out of the way first. Once she's got a kid to focus on, she'll stop watching me so close. Then I bring Chloe back."

"And if Chloe's already married with a kid of her own by then?"

"Then I take both of them. Her and the baby."

I set the phone face-down on the seat.

My hands weren't cold anymore. They were shaking.

Everything clicked into place at once, ugly and simple. The sleepless nights. The plate he pushed away at dinner. The way he stared at his phone like it owed him something.

Not work.

A woman young enough that he couldn't stand to waste her.

Young enough he'd take her back with someone else's kid on her hip, and call that love.

If it had been anyone else's husband, I'd have called it beautiful.

Cold air came through the vents and I didn't turn up the heat. I wanted to feel something on the outside that matched the inside.

Ten years of leaving the porch light on for him.

None of it weighed as much as one clip on a dash cam.

Nate got home a little after two.

He crossed the room and dropped face-down onto the bed, into the pillow, without bothering to take off his shoes.

His voice came out muffled, half into the fabric.

"Give me a son, Viv." A long breath. "My mom won't let it go. Once he's here… we're finally done."

He reached out sideways, blind, hand landing on the shape beside him. Found the hem of a nightshirt. Started to pull.

Then he went still.

Nothing under his hand but two pillows, lined up where I should have been.