At Our Anniversary Table, a Little Girl Called My Husband Dad

Synopsis

On our fifth anniversary, I found a little girl in my husband's lap, calling him Daddy. The woman beside them wiped the child's mouth with one of my late mother's blue-wren napkins-the ones I kept locked inside my home. Nolan had told me he was meeting a client. He had also told her I would understand. I left without making a scene. But four napkins were missing from my sideboard. By morning, a surveyor was measuring the flower shop my mother left me. My husband hadn't only lied about dinner. He had started clearing space for someone else inside the life he expected me to surrender.