Eliza Starts a Rumor(21)

CHAPTER 13





Olivia


Olivia got Lily to sleep for her afternoon nap with the intention of running a hot bath. She would leave Spencer the monitor so that she wouldn’t have to jump from the tub midway through as she had on previous attempts. She was even contemplating lighting a few candles and cracking open a new book. She began stripping piece by piece on the stairs and entered the bathroom to find Spencer oddly skulking in the corner looking at her phone.

“What are you doing with my phone again?” she asked, more confused than annoyed. Spencer answered by tossing it to her quite rudely. She barely caught it.

“What the hell, Spencer?”

“Well, you come in here spying on me!”

“I’m not spying on you. I’m here to take a bath. Look, I’m naked,” she said, suddenly feeling it.

Spencer stormed out before Olivia could get to the bottom of his anger. She had such a short bath window that she decided not to care, at least for now. She turned on the water and sat on the edge of the tub, dabbing her feet in and out to adjust to the temperature. She unlocked her phone. What is with him lately? she thought. And there it was, in black and white, right on her screen:


Anonymous: He came back again early this morning on a run. He confronted me about my post; his wife must be on this site, too. If you are reading this, I’m sorry. He says you have not had sex in months, and you have an open marriage. I know men say that. I wish I knew if it were true.



Olivia began to shake before she even understood why. Why was Spencer reading that bulletin board? Why was he so angry about this post?

She tried to stay calm, but her thoughts were racing. Spencer went for an early run. Is that where he was at six o’clock this morning?

Her stomach dropped and her mouth went dry. Is this woman talking to me?

She turned off the bath, stepped out of the bathroom, and pulled on a pair of leggings and a T-shirt. She thought that maybe she should wait to calm down before confronting him, but she was too enraged. She didn’t know if calming down was even an option. She felt like an animal. There must be an explanation. She needed an explanation.

“You’re imagining things, Olivia,” he’ll say. I will hear his voice, she thought, the one he uses to soothe me. I will hear his denial, and everything will be OK. But she’d never suspected such a betrayal before, and the possibility of it whipped her into a frenzy. She confronted him straight out.

“What the hell is this, Spencer? Are you having an affair?”

“What?” he asked, as if she hadn’t said it loud enough, which she definitely had. His non-answer raised her antennae even higher. She repeated the question again, slowly and clearly.

“Are you having an affair?”

“Olivia, are you serious?” He looked adequately shocked. “I would never do that. I love you—and Lily—so much. How could you think that?”

She collapsed onto the couch.

“I’m sorry. This post—it sounded so much like us. You’re gone every morning and we haven’t had sex in forever.”

“I always run in the morning. And you just had a baby. I was being respectful.”

He went to hug her and she held out her hand to stop him. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him, she just couldn’t breathe and a hug felt like further suffocation. But before she could explain that, his expression changed and he turned on her, nearly shouting in her face, “Hey. I read that post, too. I could—no, I should—ask you the same thing!”

The sudden shift and the strength of his animosity was jarring. This can’t be happening, she thought. Spencer had a tendency to turn things around in a fight, especially when his back was against a wall. But this was insane, even for him. Olivia mocked the absurdity of it.

“Yes, Spencer, your beautiful wife with her leaky udders and stretched-out stomach with this ugly dark line that everyone says will go away, but clearly isn’t? Yes, we are all having an affair.”

“I’m not joking, Olivia. I’m just a few months away from being named CEO of York Cosmetics. You know any impropriety like that could ruin me—could ruin us.”

His logic brought Olivia some relief. Being CEO meant everything to Spencer, and when she really thought it through, she doubted he would do anything to risk it. An uncle of Spencer’s had had a very public affair about ten years earlier that had almost destroyed the female-focused cosmetic brand. It was a publicity nightmare and stood as a huge cautionary tale to all the members of the York family. Maybe she was inventing this whole thing in her head? Just as she settled on that, he started up again.

“Did someone come here when I went for my run this morning? Is this why we don’t have sex anymore?”

Olivia could not believe what she was hearing. Was he seriously gaslighting her? She caught a look at herself in the mirror. Strange red hives had popped up on her face. She felt the air being squeezed from her lungs again. She gasped for more, but it was as if there wasn’t enough in the room to replace it. This whole thing was spinning out of control. She was confused and needed to think it all through clearly, away from him and Lily. She wanted so badly to believe him.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “I need to take a walk. I can’t breathe.”

She headed to the front door. Spencer chased after her and grabbed her arm.