If You Must Know (Potomac Point #1)(11)

I think I’ve fallen in love with someone else.

Think? A universe of difference existed between “I think” and “I have,” didn’t it? And he hadn’t said he didn’t love me. Was I grasping? Everything Lyle did, he did with purpose, so he’d chosen that word carefully. Chosen this method of delivery for a reason, although I couldn’t figure out why except to guess that it left me no easy way to reply.

I slammed the letter down, then stood in my kitchen, dumbfounded. At once everything felt foreign, including my body. I couldn’t move—not even a twitch—his note having severed the connection between my brain and my muscles.

While I’d been loving my husband and nurturing our unborn child, he’d fallen in love with another woman. Absurdly, the musing lyrics of that ridiculous Talking Heads song Erin used to playact, “Once in a Lifetime,” became the soundtrack to this horrible moment.

Lyle hadn’t even respected me enough to end things before moving on, let alone been willing to work on our marriage. A memory of the first time we met raced forward. November 26, 2016. Two days after Thanksgiving, when I’d gone to the gym to work off all the gravy and pumpkin pie I’d consumed. The electricity in that exercise studio when our gazes locked—his captivating blue eyes luring me like a moth to light. The way he’d waited for me to exit the women’s locker room and then walked me to my car, his quick smile drawing me in.

The weekly pink roses he’d sent to my classroom those first few months.

The interesting phone conversations about our pasts and our dreams.

The surprise sailing trip on the bay.

The empathy . . .

“Amanda, if you marry me, I swear I’ll make sure you never feel second-best again.”

The look on his face when he’d made that vow flickered, causing another sharp inhale. My life with him—his reassurances—had helped me move on from my rivalry with Erin and her place as our dad’s favorite.

But apparently I was still easily replaceable.

I’d been fighting that truth my whole life.

The silence in our home sounded different now. More permanent. Yet somehow alive, as if Lyle’s ghost were brushing against me, raising the hairs on my skin.

I think I have fallen in love with someone else.

Suddenly, like a movie playing at high speed, I began revisiting the moments of our marriage, dissecting each one, looking for clues, asking myself, “Why, why, why?” Only one conclusion mattered, though: I’d failed at the most important relationship of my life.

Again, those stupid song lyrics taunted me.

I raced upstairs to our closet and grabbed a suitcase, planning to pack a bag and fly to Florida. Then I realized I had no idea where Lyle was staying now that he’d left Tom’s.

Enraged, I yanked my clothes off hangers and tossed them in a pile beside the suitcase. Instead of desperately hunting him down, I’d move out and “show him” everything he was about to lose. Ebba might be beautiful, but she wasn’t the love of his life. I was. He’d told me so a million times, and I was carrying his child, for God’s sake!

On that thought, I crumpled to the floor in a heap with my clothes, wailing a raw, otherworldly kind of sound, releasing all the self-pity in the world through gulping sobs. I have no idea how long I remained there.

Later, exhausted, I pushed off the floor and hung my clothes back on their rods and folded others to return to their shelves.

It was then that I noticed the box Lyle kept on the top shelf of the closet. I’d never before been tempted to snoop, but now I wondered if it might contain clues. Balancing on the top of the step stool, I pulled it down and began rummaging. A high school yearbook, old VHS tapes of movies like The Usual Suspects, a framed photograph of himself at eight or nine with a woman I presumed was his mother, and a small address book. I held the image of him and his mother closer, studying the woman I’d grown to hate despite having never met her. Where had her new life taken her, and did she ever miss Lyle?

I should burn it, but instead I tossed it back into the box and flipped through the address book, stopping on his father’s contact information.

Early on in our relationship I’d promised not to contact the man Lyle had called emotionally abusive. As I stood in my closet now, my hands shook with the temptation to break that promise. I didn’t, though. Loyalty matters, even when the chips are down, so I put the box back on the shelf exactly as Lyle had placed it.

Angrily I flirted with the idea of having my own affair, maybe with Doug Silver, the hot dentist. The confident way he often smiled at me and touched my shoulder suggested he found me attractive. But rashness was Erin’s style, not mine, so I focused on my daughter. Her needs ranked above all else.

And the embarrassing truth was that I loved my husband. He hadn’t said he no longer loved me. He hadn’t asked for a divorce. He’d admitted to the affair and asked for time. Given those facts, I could stomach the punch to the gut and forgive him—for our daughter and for myself. I was Lyle’s home. It wouldn’t take him long to realize what he risked losing for an infatuation.

Until I was certain of next steps, the less anyone in town knew, the better. And family? Well, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t turn to Erin. She’d never liked Lyle—the nicest thing she could ever say about him was that he was attractive. I’d rather swallow sour milk than accept the idea that she might’ve been right about him.