Chapter 3

Toby didn't respond.

That evening, I cooked all his favorite dishes. He sat at the dining table, poked at the food with his fork, and asked, "How did you know I liked these?"

"You told me," I said. "Back when we first started dating, you took me to the cafeteria, and you ordered all of these."

He nodded, lowered his head, and started eating. He didn't ask anything else.

After dinner, he went to shower, and I stayed behind to clean up. When I walked past the bathroom, I heard the water running and him humming.

It was a song he had loved in high school. He had taught me how to sing it once. He said I was off-key, but it sounded cute.

I stood outside the bathroom door and listened. My eyes suddenly filled with tears.

He didn't know I was standing there. He didn't know I had heard that song before. He didn't know anything.

That night, he slept in the guest room.

I lay alone in the large bed in the master bedroom. The space beside me felt empty, and the blanket felt cold.

In the three years of our marriage, we had never slept apart. Even when he traveled for work, he would video call me and say he missed me and that the blanket felt cold.

I would tell him to hug my pillow as if it were me. He said he did, but that was still not enough. He said he was still cold.

Now he was just one room away, but he felt even farther than when he was on those trips.

In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom. When I passed the guest room, I saw the door slightly open. I stopped without thinking and looked inside through the gap.

He lay on his side with his back facing the door, holding his phone up. The screen lit up his face. I didn't know what he was looking at, but the corners of his mouth curved upward.

I knew that smile. It was the kind he only had when he felt secretly happy.

At eighteen, what could make him feel that way?

I already knew the answer. It was that girl.

The next day proved it.

He sat on the living room couch with his phone on speaker. His voice carried a kind of excitement that only teenagers had. "Hello? It's me, Toby. How have you been?"

A gentle female voice came through the phone. "I'm good. How about you?"

"I'm good, too," he said. "I heard you went abroad. Which country are you in?"

"Alenmart," she replied.

"Which city?" he asked.

"Toby, do you need something?" she asked.

He paused, his voice growing softer. "No. I just missed you."

I stood in the hallway and heard every word clearly.

The glass of milk in my hand had gone cold. The chill spread from my fingers all the way to my chest.

It turned out that when he was eighteen, the person he liked had never been me.

I knew about that girl. He had told me about her the night we first got together. We were sitting on the bleachers at the sports field. He held me and said he wanted to tell me something.

He said that back in high school, he had liked a girl from the class next door. She was quiet, pretty, and a good student. They had been desk partners for a while.

He used to watch her from the side while she wrote. He would find excuses to borrow her eraser. If she spoke to him a little more, he would be happy all day.

I asked him what happened after that.

He said that she didn't do well on the exam and left the country. They never contacted each other again.

I asked him if he still liked her.

He looked down at me, his eyes bright, and said that he had already met me.

That was the first time I learned about her.

After that, he never brought her up again. I thought it had just been a small, unimportant memory from his youth, like a summer breeze that came and went.

I never expected that those feelings had stayed hidden in his heart all along.

*****

Toby started calling and texting a lot more.

Sometimes, when I was in the kitchen cooking, I heard him out on the balcony, talking in a low voice.

Every now and then, he would let out a soft laugh. His tone was careful and gentle, as if he were holding something fragile. I knew that tone. He used to speak like that only to me.

Other times, I sat in the living room watching TV while he sat across from me. When his phone rang, he picked it up right away and glanced at the screen.

After reading the message, the corners of his mouth lifted just a little before he set the phone back down, acting as if nothing had happened. I knew that look. He used to wear it only for me.

His friends came over and tried to talk some sense into him.

Derick Curry, his best friend since childhood, sat on the couch and spoke seriously. "Toby, can you wake up for a second? This is Wilona, your wife.

"You've been married for three years. You spent four years chasing her. You told me you'd never marry anyone but her."

Toby frowned. "I don't remember."

"Not remembering doesn't mean it didn't happen," Derick said, his voice tight with frustration. "Look at this place. This is your home, the one you picked out yourself.

"Look at those photos. Your wedding photos. You were smiling like an idiot. And look at Wilona. She's carrying your child."

Toby looked at me. His eyes dropped to my still-flat stomach.