Tit For Tat Marriage

“Ma’am, how can you say you’re his wife when he’s already here with his wife?”

“What?”

I stared at the receptionist as though I had just seen a ghost. Then I let out a short, humourless laugh.

“I am Sienna, Mr Ethan’s wife. Please get your facts straight.”

The receptionist looked at me, then checked her computer again.

“But, ma’am…”

“My husband is here for a meeting,” I interrupted, growing impatient. “He left some important documents at home, and I came to deliver them.”

She checked the screen once more, looking increasingly uncertain.

Before she could say anything else, another receptionist approached.

“Please, ma’am. Mr Ethan is in the garden on the left.”

I nodded, clutching the file against my chest, and headed in the direction she had indicated.

With every step, my heart pounded harder. My hands were tightly clenched around the documents, and a strange uneasiness settled in my stomach.

Why had the receptionist spoken as though my husband had another wife?

I tried to dismiss the thought. Perhaps there had been a misunderstanding. Perhaps another man with the same name was staying at the hotel.

Then I heard a voice.

“I love you so much.”

My feet stopped moving.

I knew that voice.

I would recognise it anywhere.

I moved closer, peering through the gap between the tall hedges surrounding the garden.

And there he was.

My husband sat on a bench with a woman whose face I couldn’t see clearly. He had one hand on her waist while the other gently cupped her cheek.

Then he kissed her.

My lungs seemed to stop working.

Those shoes.

My eyes dropped to the woman’s feet, and my stomach twisted.

Flat wedges. Size forty.

The same shoes I had seen on the receipt in Ethan’s coat that morning. The receipt I had spent so much time trying to explain away, convincing myself that he had probably bought them for his sister.

I had been wrong.

Ethan deepened the kiss, holding the woman as though he never wanted to let her go.

He had barely touched me like that in months.

Yet there he was, kissing another woman with the same tenderness he had once shown me.

I swallowed hard, struggling to breathe as I watched them.

Then the woman laughed.

Something about that sound felt painfully familiar.

I knew that laugh. I knew the perfume she wore and the way she tilted her head when she was amused.

Slowly, she turned her face towards him.

My blood ran cold.

Camille.

My best friend.

We had been inseparable since high school. She had held my hand through my darkest days, listened to my secrets, and promised that nothing would ever come between us.

She had been there when I lost my baby.

She had cried with me, comforted me, and assured me that one day I would have another chance at motherhood.

And now she was kissing my husband.

I clamped a hand over my mouth to keep from making a sound.

If Ethan hadn’t forgotten his documents at home, I might never have discovered the truth. He had told me he was going to an important meeting at the company, but when I arrived at his office, his assistant informed me that he had never shown up.

That was when I checked his location.

That was how I had ended up here.

Watching my husband betray me with the woman I trusted most.

I couldn’t understand it.

For five years, Ethan had been the perfect husband in every way that mattered. He provided for me, remembered the smallest details about my life, and made me feel safe. We didn’t have the most passionate marriage, but I had never believed that meant he didn’t love me.

I had trusted him completely.

And now, standing there, I watched him touch Camille with a tenderness I had almost forgotten.

My eyes burned.

Then I noticed the decorations surrounding their seating area.

Pale-blue balloons. Wrapped gifts. A small poster announcing a celebration for an expected baby boy.

Camille was pregnant.

I had known about her pregnancy, of course. She had told me she was expecting, and I had assumed the baby was her husband’s.

But now…

My gaze returned to Ethan.

Was the baby his?

A cold wave of nausea swept through me.

That morning, he had told me he was meeting someone important at work. Was Camille the important person he had been talking about? Had he been planning to spend the day celebrating their child while I sat at home believing he was working?

I remembered how excited he had looked when he spoke about his meeting.

He had never looked that excited when I was pregnant.

Not even before I lost our baby.

My chest tightened as another thought surfaced.

My miscarriage.

It had happened after Camille gave me some local herbs she claimed would help with my pregnancy. I had trusted her because she was my best friend.

Now, watching her kiss my husband, I couldn’t stop wondering whether she had known something I didn’t.

Had she deliberately given me something that would make me lose my baby?

The thought was horrifying.

I wanted to storm over there, demand answers, and force them to explain what they had done to me.

But my legs felt too weak to carry me.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.

All I could do was watch as the two people I had trusted most continued kissing, oblivious to the fact that I was standing only a few metres away.

I couldn’t bear another second.

I turned to leave, desperate to get away before they noticed me.

But my hands were trembling so badly that I could barely hold the file.

The documents slipped from my grasp and scattered across the grass.

I bent down quickly, tears blurring my vision as I gathered them.

Then one page caught my attention.

I froze.

My eyes moved over the words printed at the top.

DRAFT PETITION FOR DISSOLUTION OF MARRIAGE.

For several seconds, I couldn’t understand what I was reading.

My husband wasn’t just cheating on me.

He was preparing to end our marriage.

And judging by the documents in my hands, he had already started.