Second Wife

Chapter 11 — Waiting

The words hung in the kitchen air like something that could break.

“You know, don’t you?”

Anna’s hand froze around her coffee mug. For three weeks she had rehearsed this moment — the righteous accusation, the tears, the demand for an explanation. Beth Marlow was supposed to be the other woman, the home-wrecker, the enemy. Anna had written the script of this confrontation a dozen times in her head, usually ending with Beth crying and begging.

Instead, Beth set her own mug down and smiled. Not a cruel smile. A tired, relieved one.

“I’ve known for two years,” Beth said quietly. “Two years, Anna. And I’ve been waiting for you to come to me.”

The kitchen tilted. Anna gripped the edge of the counter.

“That’s not possible,” Anna said. “I’ve only known for—”

“Three weeks? Since you started following him?” Beth’s eyes never left hers. “I know. You followed him here in March. You’ve been documenting his lies in a little notebook you keep in your purse. The red one. You hid it when I came into the pantry last Tuesday.”

Anna’s breath caught. She hadn’t told Beth anything. Not the receipt. Not the wedding photo. Not the notebook.

“I don’t understand,” Anna whispered.

“Come sit down,” Beth said, gesturing at the kitchen table where her two children had eaten breakfast an hour ago. “I owe you two years of waiting.”

Anna sat because her legs wouldn’t hold her anymore.

“Two years ago,” Beth began, “I found a second cell phone in Craig’s overnight bag. Not a burner — a good phone. He’d been using it for years. There were texts to a woman named Anna. ‘Miss you, babe.’ ‘Jenna’s recital tonight, running late.’ ‘Love you.’ I did what you’re doing now. I followed him. I drove forty minutes to your town and I watched your house for three days.”

Beth’s voice cracked.

“I watched you leave for work at seven forty with a travel mug. I watched you bring the mail in at noon. I watched your daughter come home from school with her headphones on. And I sat in my car and I cried, because the woman in the texts was real, and she was good, and I was the other woman. I was the one who came second.”

“I’m not—” Anna started.

“Let me finish.” Beth took a shaky breath. “I wanted to confront him. God, I wanted to. But then I thought about my kids. And I thought about you. What good does it do if I go to his wife screaming? He’d lie. He’d turn us against each other. That’s what men like Craig do — they need us fighting each other so we never look at him.”

Anna remembered every script she’d written in her head. Every single one ended with Beth crying. Not once had it ended with Beth waiting.

“So I waited,” Beth said. “I figured one day you’d find out. And when you did, you’d have a choice. You could come at me swinging — or you could come curious. The curious ones, I told myself, the curious ones I can work with. And then three weeks ago you ‘accidentally’ ran your cart into mine in the cereal aisle, and I thought: finally.”

The supermarket. Anna had rehearsed that too. The casual hello. The friendly laugh. She had thought she was so clever.

“You knew?” Anna said. “That day in the supermarket—”

“Your cart didn’t need to be in my way, Anna. I live six aisles from the cereal. You’d been parked outside my house twice. I wasn’t going to let you stalk me forever. So I came to you. I befriended you the way you were befriending me, and I waited to see who you’d be.”

Anna felt naked. Every move she thought she’d made — the friendship, the bonding, the secret — Beth had seen coming. She’d been playing chess with someone who’d already finished the game.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” Anna asked. “Why all of this?”

Beth leaned forward, and her voice dropped to something fierce.

“Because I needed to know you wouldn’t try to kill me before I could tell you the rest. And because, Anna—” she paused, and her eyes filled— “I think you’re the only person in this world who understands what he took from me. From us. My name is on his lies too. And I’ve been alone with it for two years.”

Anna looked at this woman across the table — the woman who was supposed to be her enemy — and felt the rage she’d been nursing for three weeks crack open into something else entirely.

Something that looked a lot like grief. And underneath it, something that looked a lot like hope.

“Okay,” Anna said. “Tell me the rest.”

Beth reached across the table and took her hand.

“Not here,” Beth said. “Not where he might walk in. Tomorrow. My kids will be at school. Your daughter too. And Anna—” she squeezed her hand — “bring the red notebook. Because what I know, and what you’ve documented, together it’s enough. It’s finally enough.”

Anna drove home in a daze, the road blurring in front of her. Two years. Beth had known for two years, and she’d waited. Anna thought about all those months — all the mornings Beth had woken up knowing, the birthdays and holidays she’d celebrated with a man who had another family forty minutes away.

She parked in her driveway and sat in the car for a long time.

Then she opened her purse, pulled out the red notebook, and on the first blank page wrote:

*She knew. She was waiting. Tomorrow we start.*

Her phone buzzed. A text from Beth, the number Anna had saved three weeks ago under “Beth (supermarket)”:

**Tomorrow, 10 a.m. Come hungry. We’re going to need our strength.**

Anna stared at the screen. For the first time in three weeks, she didn’t feel alone.

And that terrified her more than anything.