She’s Up to No Good: A Novel

“I met someone.”

I didn’t look up from my phone, my legs curled under me on the sofa as I scrolled real estate listings. “Oh! I meant to tell you; I did too. Remember that girl with the horrible, yappy dog? Her name is Vanessa. She’s actually nice. I’m following her on Instagram now.”

“No. I—” Brad stopped, cleared his throat, and tried again. “I mean I met someone, met someone.”

This time I looked up, my eyes narrowing. “What does that mean?” He didn’t respond. His shoulders were hunched, his face set in a pained grimace as if bracing for an attack. I glanced down at his left hand, saw his thumb worrying the white gold band that he had worn for the last four years, and felt something in my stomach drop. “Oh.”

He sank into the chair opposite me. “Jenna—I—I’m sorry.”

I exhaled audibly and nodded. “Well. Okay. It’s done, though, right? We’ll—we’ll get some counseling, and we’ll—we’ll deal. People do . . . things . . . and they come through it.”

His eyes widened. “No.”

“What do you mean no? No, it’s not over with . . . her? Or no you don’t want . . . ?”

“I’m sorry.”

I didn’t realize my phone was still in my hand until I threw it across the sofa. “Stop saying that!” He winced, and I felt a wave of nausea wash over me, but I fought it back and got myself under control. “But—we were looking for a house.”

“I know.”

“And were going to start trying for a baby once we were in the house.”

“I know.”

“And you . . . you were . . . lying . . . when you said you wanted that?”

“Not . . . lying exactly. I do want kids. And I thought maybe it would help. Look, I wasn’t trying to find someone else. It just happened. And it made me realize how unhappy we were.”

“I was happy!”

He looked like he was going to argue, and I felt my hopes rise. Not that I wanted to fight, but if he was willing to, there was still a chance. I could get him to come around. But then he changed course. “Okay. I haven’t been. We fight all the time. We barely ever have sex anymore. And I’m tired of having to pretend everything is perfect when it’s not.”

I took a deep breath. He wasn’t wrong exactly. We had been fighting a lot. And sex? It couldn’t have been that long, could it? No, I couldn’t remember the last time we actually did it, but it couldn’t have been more than—I stopped myself. If I had to calculate, it wasn’t a good sign. But . . . that didn’t mean we weren’t happy. Maybe there were some cracks in the foundation, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t fix.

“We can work on all of that. We can go talk to someone. We can—we can take a trip. Get away. Just the two of us. Reconnect. Put the baby stuff on hold for a little while. I mean, not too long. We’re not getting any younger. But a little while. Until we’re on more solid ground. We’ll go back to that resort we went to on our honeymoon—we’ve been saying for years we should go back. We were so happy there. We’ll go there, and we’ll just . . . fix this.”

Brad shook his head. “I don’t want to work on fixing things anymore. It shouldn’t be this hard. You and I were always better on paper than in person. And with Taylor, it’s just . . . easy.”

“Taylor? She’s twenty-two, isn’t she? You’re leaving me for a cliché.”

Brad jerked his head to the side to crack his neck, which made me cringe. He knew I couldn’t stand when he did that and apparently didn’t care anymore. “Don’t you see? This is exactly what I’m talking about. You don’t even care that I’m not happy. You just care about how you’re going to look when you tell people.”

I glared at him. How dare he act like I was shallow for not caring about his feelings when he was leaving me for a twenty-two-year-old?

My mouth dropped open to argue. To tell him that he was the one who didn’t care about my feelings. But all that came out was a whisper.

“But we’re married.”

Brad leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and began to speak, his tone earnest, but I only heard phrases over the roaring in my ears. Unhappy for a while now . . . realized I was relieved when you weren’t pregnant . . . fighting so much . . . not in love anymore . . . both deserve better.

I interrupted him mid-sentence. I may not have comprehended much of what he said, but I had heard enough. “You won’t even try?”

“I’m sorry.”

“But—we just ordered a Peloton. It hasn’t even come yet!”

He shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly. “You can have it.”

“I don’t care about the stupid Peloton!” He flinched. I looked up at him. “So, what? You’re just . . . leaving?”

He cleared his throat again, and this time I felt my chest clench as I realized the next problem. “Tonight, yes. And you can stay as long as you need to until you figure out what you want to do. But—” I held up a hand and he stopped talking. I knew what was coming. The condo was his before we got married. I had never been on the deed. And as a middle school teacher, I knew it was way, way out of my price range. “I’ll help you out as much as you need to get on your feet.”

“I guess I need a lawyer to figure out how this works.” I was trying to get a reaction. Brad was a lawyer, and that had to sting. But he nodded.

“I’m going to sell the condo. I’ll give you half.”

My mouth opened again, this time to tell him I didn’t want it, but I shut it quickly. If he was going to blow up everything we had built and leave me single and homeless at thirty-four, I shouldn’t walk away with just a ridiculously expensive exercise bike. I nodded almost imperceptibly.

He stood and walked to the door, where he picked up a duffle bag that I hadn’t noticed him packing. “I’m sorry,” he said one more time from the doorway, pulling off his wedding ring and leaving it on the little table where we put the mail. And then he was gone.

I dropped my head into my hands, tears of frustration at my own inadequacy beginning to fall. How did this happen? I asked myself. We had been together six years. Six years! And then just out of the blue . . . ?

But was it out of the blue? a tiny voice in my head asked. Now that I knew the context, he had been smiling at his phone a lot. In a way he didn’t smile at me anymore—when had he stopped looking at me like that? I never even asked him what he was smiling about. But the truth was, I didn’t care. I should have cared. I should have asked. I should have realized something was wrong when he stopped wanting to have sex. Or maybe I should have cared when I stopped wanting to, which was a long time before he did.

But I hadn’t.

I swore, breaking the silence of the room. It was too quiet. I looked around my home of the last five years, seeing it through fresh eyes now.

This condo . . . Well, it had always been a waystation. Even before we got married, the plan was to buy a house to start our family in. This was never a forever home.

And maybe that was where the trouble started. I was ready to move and try for a baby four years ago. But Brad found something wrong with every house. Or the timing was off with his job. And whenever I brought up a baby, he reminded me that he wanted us to be settled in a house first.

On the one hand, it was better that he was selling the condo. I wouldn’t have to imagine him there with some fresh-out-of-college, doe-eyed blonde who laughed at every inane thing he said. But on the other hand, why hadn’t he been willing to take that next step with me?

I took a deep breath. I can do this. Yes, I was hurt, but I had survived one hundred percent of the setbacks I had faced so far in life. This wouldn’t be the one that destroyed me. I would take a couple of weeks to lick my wounds and then . . . Well, I’d just figure out a game plan. Because I had to.

But to do that, I needed to leave. Right then. Staying in the condo even just overnight would make it harder.

“This isn’t my home,” I said out loud, picking up my phone from the end of the sofa where I had thrown it.

I felt my shoulders droop as I unlocked it and saw the house I had been looking at when Brad dropped his bomb. It would have been such a perfect place to raise a family. I felt my imaginary future children popping like bubbles and dissipating into the air.

With a sigh, I swiped up to close the app and took another deep breath, looking one last time at the Washington, DC, skyline through the balcony door. Then I went to my contacts, pressed the call button, and cradled the phone to my ear.

“Hi, sweetie. What’s up?”

My voice broke as I started to cry in earnest. “Can I come home for a little while, Mom?”