The Wife Between Us(111)

All the while, my eyes never stray from her.

When I’ve watched her before, I’ve tried to gauge her emotional state. Know thy enemy, Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War. I read that book for a college course and the line resonated with me deeply.

Vanessa never realized I was a threat. She only saw what I wanted her to see; she bought into the illusion I created.

She thinks I am Emma Sutton, the innocent woman who fell into the trap she laid to escape her husband. I’m still stunned by Vanessa’s admission that she orchestrated my affair with Richard; I thought I was the one spinning a web.

Apparently we were unwitting coconspirators.

Vanessa has no idea who I really am, though. No one does.

I could walk away now, and she’d never be privy to the truth. She looks completely recovered from all that has happened to her. Maybe it’s best for her not to know.

I look down at the photograph I am clutching. The edges are worn from age and frequent handling.

It is a picture of a seemingly happy family: a father, a mother, a little boy with dimples, and a preteen girl with braces. The photo was taken years ago, when I was twelve, back when we lived in Florida. A few months before our family shattered.


It was after ten P.M. and I should have been asleep—it was past my bedtime—but I wasn’t. I heard the doorbell ring, then my mother call, “I’ll get it.”

My father was in his room, probably grading papers. He often did that at night.

I heard the murmur of voices, then my father scrambling down the hallway toward the stairs.

“Vanessa!” he cried. His voice sounded so strained it propelled me out of my room. My socks slid silently along the carpeted floor as I crept past my younger brother’s bedroom, to the top of the stairs, and huddled there. I could see everything unfolding directly below me. I was a spectator in the shadows.

I witnessed my mother fold her arms and glare at my father. I witnessed my father gesture with his hands as he talked. I witnessed my little calico cat wind between my mother’s legs, as if trying to soothe her.

After my mother slammed the door, she turned to my dad.

I will never forget how her face looked in that moment.

“She came on to me,” my father insisted, his round blue eyes, so like mine, widening. “She kept showing up during my office hours and asking for extra help. I tried to turn her away, and she kept— It was nothing, I swear.”


But it wasn’t nothing. Because a month later, my father moved out.

My mother blamed my father, but she also blamed the pretty coed who’d enticed my dad into an affair. She would throw out the name Vanessa during their fights, her mouth twisting as if those three syllables tasted bitter; it became shorthand for everything that went wrong between them.

I blamed her as well.

After I graduated from college, I came to New York for a visit. I looked her up, of course; she was Vanessa Thompson by now. My name was different, too. After my father left, my mother reverted to her maiden name, Sutton. When I became an adult, I changed mine to it also.

Vanessa lived in a big house in an affluent suburb. She was married to a handsome man. She was gliding through a golden life, one she didn’t deserve. I wanted to see her close up, but I couldn’t find a way to get near her. She rarely left her home. There was no way we could naturally intersect.

I almost cut my trip short. Then I realized something.

I could get close to her husband.

It was easy to find out where Richard worked. I quickly learned that he liked double espressos from the corner coffee shop every afternoon around three. He was a creature of habit. I brought my laptop and camped out at a table. The next time he came in, our eyes met.

I was used to men hitting on me, but this time I was the pursuer. Just as I imagined she had been with my father.

I’d given him my brightest smile. “Hi. I’m Emma.”

I’d expected him to want to sleep with me; men usually did. That would have been enough, even if it was just for one night; eventually, his wife would have found out. I’d have made certain of that.

The symmetry of it appealed to me. It felt like justice.

Instead, he suggested I apply for a job as an assistant at his company.

Two months later, I replaced his secretary, Diane.

A few months after that, I replaced his wife.


I look down at the photo in my hand again.

I was so wrong about everything.

About my father.

I was deceived once by a married man when I was college, Vanessa had said on the day we’d met at the bridal salon. I thought he loved me. He never told me about his wife.

I was wrong about Richard.

If you marry Richard, you will regret it, she’d warned me when she confronted me outside my apartment. And later, while Richard stood beside me, she’d tried again, even though she was visibly scared: He will hurt you.

I think of how Richard pulled me to his side, wrapping his arm around me, after Vanessa uttered those words. The gesture seemed protective. But his fingertips dug into my flesh, creating a little trail of plum-colored marks. I don’t even think he knew he was doing it; he was glaring at Vanessa in that moment. The next day, when I met Vanessa at the bridal salon, I made sure to keep her on my other side.

And most of all, I was wrong about Vanessa.

It is only fair that she knows she was wrong about me, too.