The Girl I Used to Be by Heidi Hostetter (booksvooks .txt) 📗

confidence in her work, despite her inability to sell the Dewberry Beach house. And finally, his bizarre request for Jill to lend Brittney “something nice” from her jewelry case. Like a cyclone gathering strength as it spun, the images came, clawing her with unexpected force. The whispered phone calls taken in another room. Routine work meetings that suddenly ran late and required an overnight stay in the Greenwich Village apartment. The renewed interest in the Dewberry Beach property and the trips to check on it.

All of it came together in one picture, a truth that struck her like a physical blow.

Marc was having an affair.

Jill gripped the edge of the chair as she felt the room spin. She closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe, though she’d forgotten how. They’d only been married three years.

“Hey, dinner ready?” Marc entered the kitchen, freshly showered.

She heard him pause at the doorway and she opened her eyes.

“You good?” Marc asked casually as he lifted the skillet lid to inspect the contents underneath.

Jill stared at the man she’d married.

She’d been twenty-two years old when she’d accepted a temp job in Marc’s office, commuting into Manhattan because city jobs paid two dollars more an hour and she needed the money. Their first date began with a casual invitation to lunch. Marc had said he’d meet her outside but when she’d seen him standing beside a sleek black limousine, she’d been sure she’d mistaken the dates. Their “simple lunch” date had included a carriage ride through Central Park to the Boathouse restaurant where Marc had reserved a table overlooking the water. After a two-hour lunch, he’d taken her to Bergdorf’s and told her to choose anything she wanted from the jewelry case, something that would remind her of their first date. It was an outrageous offer, and Jill had suspected that Aunt Sarah would have disapproved, but Jill had just ended a terrible relationship and Marc’s attention had been precisely the balm she’d needed. When she’d shyly asked for a charm bracelet, Marc had bought it without hesitation, even though it was outrageously expensive. And when the clerk had suggested a horse and buggy charm to go with it, Marc had laughed and added several more. For the next two weeks, he’d taken her out every night and gifted her a different charm before the start of every date.

Idly, Jill wondered if Brittney had received a charm bracelet too.

“Jill?” Marc’s voice felt like a stab.

“You’re sleeping with her.” Saying it out loud made it real. The accusation was explosive, and the resulting mushroom cloud floated on the air like poison.

Marc cursed softly under his breath and she knew it was true. Jill felt her heart shatter, her soul splinter. A part of her hoped he would deny it—wanted him to deny it. She wanted to believe that there would be a reasonable explanation for the pictures.

“Then it’s true?” she asked again, just to be sure. Maybe there was an explanation, something she could hold on to. Something that would make things right again.

“I told her not to send the pictures,” he sighed, as if the worst part was that Brittney had disobeyed him.

Jill unlocked her phone and turned the screen toward him without looking at it herself, because seeing them together again would break her.

“How long?” she managed to ask. Of the million questions that bubbled up, this one seemed the most important.

But Marc refused to look, refused to abandon his place by the stove. Would not accept the evidence of his betrayal. In a surge of rage, Jill hurled her phone at him, but she missed. It ricocheted off the fancy quartz countertop and clattered to the floor once more.

“How. Long?” Her shriek filled the room, absorbing the air and smothering what was left of their marriage.

Marc let the question hang in the air, unanswered. They locked eyes, and when he understood that Jill would not back down, his own widened in surprise. She’d always backed down before.

He raked his fingers through his hair and shrugged. “I don’t know. A few months, maybe more.”

Jagged emotions swirled and churned, erupting in questions that pelted her like scattershot, each one inflicting a wound that would fester. How could Marc so casually toss aside a marriage that had meant everything to her? Was Brittney his only affair or had there been others? Others that may have begun and ended with Jill blissfully unaware. And, most importantly, had Marc ever loved her or was she just a placeholder? The last question almost brought her to her knees, but she steeled herself because right now, she needed to know.

“At the Dewberry Beach house.” Jill sagged against the countertop. “That’s why you traveled there so often.”

“Yes.”

His easy admission surprised her. It gave her the courage to ask another question, though it felt as if she were pressing on a bruise. And the pain was cumulative; she wasn’t sure how much more she could bear.

“Your birthday party. You left me alone with your guests while you were with—” The room spun, and she drew breath to steady it. “You were with Brittney. You slept with her that night, didn’t you? That last picture was taken in our room. In our bed.”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“What?”

“I assume you’ve set her up in her own apartment. That’s what you did with me. Or is that why the Dewberry house hasn’t sold? You’re keeping it for her? A house that big is quite a step up from the apartment you offered me, I must say.”

Even as she asked the question, Jill knew the answer. All of this was so unimaginable that it had to be a dream. It must be a dream. Jill grabbed the metal spoon from the skillet and squeezed the handle as hard as she could, hoping for pain. If it didn’t hurt, that meant she was dreaming—that what was happening now wasn’t real.

Marc straying from her had been Jill’s deepest fear from the very beginning. The gap between Marc’s official separation