Page 112 of Six Month Wife

I turn off the screen and put the phone face down on my leg. I'm done talking to him. I'm done talking to everyone.

I don’t know who that man is. I don’t know what the context was. But I know what itlookedlike. And that’s enough to gut me.

I tried so hard not to become my father.

And I still walked straight into his trap, only she's wrapped in prettier lies and wearing perfume.

The garage doorcreaks open as I pull in. I'm still half-numb. I kill the engine, but I don’t move.

I can’t.

The images are burned into my brain. I can see her arms around him, his hand on her face, those looks.

I finally get out and head inside. My keys are clenched so hard they bite into my skin.

The sound must carry, because I hear her voice before I even get the door open.

“Parker?”

I freeze.

She’s on her porch. A few steps down from mine.

She's barefoot with her hair braided and draped over one shoulder.

She’s holding something, her phone, maybe, but she’s not looking at it. She’s looking at me like she's been waiting for me like this all day.

I don’t say anything. I’m not sure I have anything left to say. The pictures said enough.

And she’s been pulling away for days.

I read once that when someone tells you who they are, believe them.

Didn’t apply to me—until now.

She’s been saying it in every dodge, every brush-off. Every look said, “Not now.”

And I still thought I could change her mind.

She crosses the narrow strip of grass that separates our places and stops short of my steps. Not on them, not in my personal space. But close.

“I saw it,” she says. “The article.”

Of course she did. It's everywhere. Her face. Her affair. My humiliation.

“Uh-huh, me too. He looks like a great guy."

“It wasn’t what it looked like,” she blurts out.

I let out a laugh. Hollow. “Oh, right. Sure. He was a friend, right?”

Her face flinches like I slapped her.

I blink. The words suck all the oxygen out of the room, and it takes a moment for me to digest what she said.

A huge part of me wants to believe her, pleads to the universe for it to be that simple.

But a small part of me, the part that’s still bleeding from the way she looked at him, the way she buried herself in his chest, still has a seed of doubt. That's the part that flinches.