DISCARDED WIFE, MY HUSBAND'S WORST NIGHTMARE

Chapter 1

LARA'S POV

I had been awake since six that morning.

I vacuumed the living room twice, changed the flowers in the hallway vase three times, and spent forty minutes deciding between two identical white candles. By five in the afternoon the dining table looked exactly the way I had pictured it. White linen, our good plates, the wine Andre had been saving for something worth celebrating. I stood at the end of the table and looked at it for a moment. Ten years. That felt worth it.

I went upstairs and changed into the blue dress he once told me was his favourite. I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror, smoothed my hair, and decided I looked fine. Not nervous. I had no reason to be nervous. This was my home and tonight was our anniversary and I had cooked his favourite meal and everything was ready.

I heard the front door open at six forty-five.

I came down the stairs smiling. Andre was standing in the entrance hall with his jacket open and his tie loosened, the way he always looked when he came home from a long day. I started to say something and then stopped.

There was a woman standing behind him.

The woman was carrying a baby.

I stood on the bottom stair and looked at them. The woman was tall, with dark hair pulled back and a coat that probably cost more than most people's monthly salary. The baby was wrapped in a blue blanket and she was holding him against her shoulder with the easy confidence of someone who had been doing it for months. Andre stepped to the side, not in front of the woman, but beside her. Like they had arrived together. Like this was planned.

"Happy anniversary," Andre said.

I looked at him. I looked at the woman. I looked at the baby. "What is this?" I asked.

"This is Tasha," Andre said. He walked past me toward the kitchen, picked up the wine bottle from the counter, and examined the label. "And that's Dylan. My son."

Tasha smiled at me from the doorway. It was a patient smile, the kind someone uses when they already know how a conversation is going to end.

"Your son," I said.

"I've been meaning to tell you," Andre said. He found the corkscrew in the drawer. "There never seemed to be a good moment."

I came down the last stair and walked toward him. My hands were shaking and I pushed them into the fabric of my dress so he wouldn't see. "Ten years," I said. "There wasn't one good moment in ten years to tell me you had a child with someone else."

"He's four months old," Andre said.

Tasha walked into the dining room without being invited. She set the baby carefully in the crook of one arm and reached up to touch the flowers on the table with her free hand. "This is lovely," she said. She was not talking to me.

I followed her into the dining room. That was when I saw it.

Around her neck was a gold chain with a small oval locket. My mother had worn that locket every day of her adult life. I took it from her bedside table the afternoon she died. I had kept it in the top drawer of my dresser for six years because I could not decide where to put it and I was not ready to let it go.

"That is my mother's necklace," I said.

Tasha touched it with two fingers. "Andre gave it to me."

I looked at Andre. He was opening the wine. He did not look up.

I moved toward her. I was not thinking clearly. I reached for the chain and Tasha stepped back and before my hand made contact Andre caught my wrist. His fingers closed hard and I felt the bones press together and I made a small sound that I did not mean to make.

"Don't," he said quietly.

He was not angry. That was the thing that I kept coming back to. He was not upset or defensive or embarrassed. He was completely calm.

The housekeeper was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Two of the service staff were visible through the hallway. Nobody moved.

I pulled my arm back. My wrist was already reddening.

Tasha adjusted the baby on her shoulder and said, "I moved my things into the upstairs suite this afternoon. I hope that's all right." She said it the way someone announces a change in schedule.

"That's my bedroom," I said.

"It was the most practical option," Andre said. He poured wine into a glass. One glass. For himself.

I stood in the middle of my own dining room and understood, with a clarity I had not expected, that this had not happened tonight. This had been arranged. She knew where the bedroom was. She knew where the necklace was kept. She had arrived at six forty-five because that was when I would be downstairs and the room would be ready to walk into. All of it had been planned while I was vacuuming and changing flowers and deciding between candles.

I was still thinking about this when Tasha stumbled.

It happened fast. Her heel caught the edge of the dining room rug and she lurched backward and the baby tilted and I moved without thinking. I dropped to my knees on the marble floor and got my hands under the baby before he fell. The marble was hard and my knees hit it badly and I felt it through my whole leg. I held the baby against my chest and looked up.

He was fine. He was looking at the ceiling.

Andre crossed the room in three steps. "What did you do?" His voice had changed.

"She dropped him," I said. I started to get up.

"She pushed me," Tasha said from behind him. Her voice was different now, higher and shaky. "She came at me. She was trying to take Dylan."

"I caught him," I said. "He was falling and I caught him."

Andre took the baby from my arms and checked him over. He turned to the housekeeper and told her to call the house doctor immediately, his voice carrying the kind of authority that moved people before they could think about it.

I got to my feet. My knees were bleeding through my stockings. I could feel it.

"I saved him," I said. "Tasha let go and I got under him before he hit the floor. Ask anyone in this room."

I looked at the staff in the doorway. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

Andre turned to face me. "You have been jealous and unstable for months," he said. "I have watched you get worse. This is not a surprise to anyone in this house."

"You know what I have been," I said. I could hear my own voice going flat, the way it does when I am very close to losing it completely. "I have been loyal. For ten years I have been loyal to you and to this house and I lost five pregnancies in this marriage and you brought another woman into my home tonight with a baby and you gave her my mother's necklace."

I stopped.

Andre set the wine glass down.

"You know why I lost those pregnancies," I said. "You know what the doctors found. You know what you did."

He hit me.

It was not a big movement. His hand moved and my head moved and I tasted blood immediately, the inside of my lip against my teeth. I stood there with my hand at my jaw. The room was completely quiet.

I looked down at the floor. There was a small red mark on the white marble. I stared at it for a moment.

Then I looked at him.

"You just made the biggest mistake of your life," I said.

He made a short sound that was almost a laugh. "You'll come back," he said. "You always come back."

"Not this time."

I picked up my bag from the side table near the door. I walked out of the dining room and through the entrance hall and out the front door. I did not run. I walked down the driveway toward the gate, my heels on the stone, the cold air on my face.

I was almost at the gate when my legs gave out. I went down slowly, my hand hitting the stone first, and then I was on the ground and the gate was right there and the stone was cold through my dress. I could hear my own breathing.

My phone was on the ground beside my hand. The screen lit up once. One ring. The number was one I didn't recognise.

Then the screen went dark.

Then everything did.