The woman looked at me with a straight face.
My jaw hit the floor when she quietly replied, “That’s impossible. He told me he wasn’t married.”
The room went silent around us. Even the instructor stopped shaping her clay vase. I felt heat rush to my face as every woman at the table stared back and forth between us.
At first, I thought it had to be some horrible misunderstanding.
“What’s his name?” I asked shakily.
When she answered, my stomach twisted. It was my husband.
She pulled out her phone with trembling hands and showed me photos of them together. Weekend trips. Dinner dates. Selfies in his car. The dates stretched back nearly two years — almost the entire length of our marriage.
“I swear I didn’t know,” she whispered. “He said his ex-wife was unstable and wouldn’t leave him alone.”
I couldn’t even speak.
Then my best friend beside me suddenly grabbed the phone and zoomed in on one picture. Her eyes widened.
“That’s not a hotel,” she muttered. “That’s my cousin’s lake house.”
The woman blinked. “Your cousin rented it to us last summer.”
My friend slowly looked up at me. “My cousin said he came there with a pregnant woman.”
The room spun.
Because last summer, while I was seven months pregnant and on bed rest… my husband told me he was away caring for his dying brother.
