Chapter 1 - Three Bags By The Pillar
The bags were the first thing I saw. Three of them, big and black and tied too tight at the tops, left right on the stone pavers by the white pillar at the bottom of our steps. One had split open at the side. My dresses were spilling out onto the cold stone, the navy one I wore to the foundation dinner, the gray one with the loose hem. My silk scarf with the blue border was half under them, and the photographs were everywhere, face up and face down, glossed paper catching the flat morning light.
He was already coming down the driveway toward me at full speed, and that was the contradiction I couldn't make fit. This was our house. I had a key in my purse. I had left my coffee mug on the counter that morning. But my clothes were in trash bags like I was already gone, and he was walking like he wanted to make sure I stayed gone.
My name is Emma, I was thirty-eight, and that morning I had still thought I lived there.
The gate had been open when I pulled in. That was the first wrong detail. It was never open before ten. I parked off to the side because the driveway was full, four black SUVs angled around something bright pink in the center I didn't understand yet. The air smelled like cut grass and wet stone. I could hear car doors closing and men's shoes moving fast on pavers. Then I saw her standing up on the front steps in a light-colored robe, her long blonde hair loose around her shoulders, just watching.
I walked to the pillar because I didn't know where else to walk. Up close the open bag was worse. Someone had packed in a hurry. A zipper was caught in the plastic. The scarf was damp at one corner from the stone. I bent down and started to gather the photos without thinking, my hands moving before my head caught up. They were our old prints, the ones I kept in the cedar box in the closet. Me and him in the backyard. Me holding a dog that had died years ago. I turned one over and then another, trying to understand why they were outside.
He reached me then. Short brown hair, dark shirt, breathing hard like he'd run across the whole driveway. His face was flushed and set. He stopped too close, close enough that I could see the pulse in his neck. He looked down at me, at my hands on the photos, and said it straight to my face.
"You don't live here anymore."
Behind him everything kept moving. One of the security men in a dark uniform and cap walked past the pink sports car with his hand up, guiding one of the SUVs back a few feet. Another stood near the steps below the blonde woman. Tires made a low sound on the stone. Nobody looked at me on the ground except him. I stayed half-bent over the spilled dresses and photos, my coat pulling across my shoulders, my hair falling forward. The overcast light made everything look washed out and too still, even with the engines running.
I didn't answer him. I couldn't figure out where to put my hands. Part of me wanted to pick up the scarf and shake the grit off it. Part of me wanted to stand up and step back. He didn't move, didn't soften, didn't reach to help me with the bag that had his wife's life in it. I looked down at the pavers because looking at him hurt too much, and I reached again toward the open bag.
May you like
That was when the glove came into my view.
A man in a dark uniform stepped in from my left, calm and professional, and held something up between me and my husband. A worn dark leather folder, scuffed at the edges, held high enough that I had to stop reaching. I froze with my fingers just above the silk. On the front, in white handwritten letters, it said For Emma, When He Betrays You. Behind it, out of focus, my husband's face changed. The anger drained out of it and left something shocked and open-mouthed, like he was seeing the folder for the first time too.
