The ninth button. I was sewing the ninth button back onto my husband's shirt when he fished a scrap of lace from the laundry pile and dangled it between two fingers.
"Did this shrink?" Thomas squinted at the fabric, turning it over.
The needle froze mid-stitch.
That pair was six months old. It hadn't changed.
When I said nothing, he scratched his head and shrugged. "Must have remembered wrong. Women's sizes are all over the place anyway."
Outside, the drying rack swayed in the breeze. Every pair of panties hanging there was identical—conservative cotton.
That scrap of lace wasn't mine.
My phone buzzed against the table. Quinn Barnes. My former senior from grad school, inviting me to join his overseas research institute.
For the 998th time.
——
*Ignore.*
"Professor Gilbert! Come take a picture!"
Hazel Fox hooked her arm through Thomas's and claimed the seat of honor beside him. She pressed her chest firmly against his arm, radiating a possessiveness that made my stomach turn.
My mother-in-law shoved her phone into my hands. "You. Take the picture. Then go cook."
Hazel sat dead center, flanked by Thomas and his mother. They looked like the perfect family.
"Isn't this inappropriate?" I turned to Thomas, silently pleading for him to remember his role. To set a boundary.
His brow furrowed. "Just take it, Elise. Hazel is hungry."
So I raised the phone. Maintained the facade of the virtuous wife. My finger trembled on the shutter.
The image froze on the screen: Hazel's head tilted, resting intimately on Thomas's shoulder.
As I handed the phone back, I saw it.
His palm. Pressed possessively against the small of her back.
I had always believed that as a professor at A University, Thomas Gilbert would have boundaries. Integrity.
The man before me felt like a stranger.
Earlier, a student had approached me, eager to discuss new material science findings. Hazel had cut in with a sneer. "Are you stupid? The Professor's wife is just a housewife. What would she know about that?"
Three years ago, I was a specially appointed professor at that same university. Many of the students in this room had once attended my lectures.
Not a single one spoke up for me.
Thomas had merely smiled, tacitly allowing the ridicule.
Nausea rose in my throat. I turned toward my room, but my mother-in-law blocked my path and shoved me toward the kitchen.
"Don't think you can slack off. You've been married for years and still haven't managed to lay an egg. You haven't earned the right to be lazy."
She watched me like a prison warden while I chopped vegetables.
Thomas entered a moment later. For once, he handed me a pair of gloves.
"Hazel has a delicate stomach." His voice was void of warmth. "If the food isn't clean, she gets diarrhea."
He took the fruit platter I had just cut and carried it out to the living room.
"Professor is so amazing!" the students chorused. "He even helps his wife with the housework!"
My mother-in-law beamed. "My son is young and outstanding. Any woman who marries him should thank her lucky stars! If he hadn't settled down so early, he could have done much better."
"If I had met Teacher ten years ago, I definitely would have pursued him," Hazel sighed. "With such a good husband, I'd give him three children!"
I stood in the doorway, balancing a steaming dish in one hand and a stack of bowls in the other.
Thomas and Hazel were gazing at each other. The air between them was thick. Electric.
The ceramic burned my fingers, but a chill spread through my chest, freezing my heart inch by inch.
How many years had it been since he looked at me with that kind of tenderness?
I set the dish on the table with a clatter. "Eat."
The moment the bedroom door clicked shut behind me, the dam broke. Tears streamed down my face, hot and fast.
Three years ago, I was pregnant. I worked myself to the bone and lost the baby to exhaustion.
Back then, Thomas had held me, whispering, "The child isn't important. You are the most important thing to me."
Because of that sentence—*isn't important*—I had endured three years of ovulation shots and swallowed countless hormone pills. My legs had swollen until I could barely walk.
Yesterday, two pink lines had finally appeared on the test.
Today, I discovered my husband was cheating.
A knock disrupted my grief. Thomas squeezed into the room. Seeing my red, swollen eyes, he let out a long, exaggerated sigh and lifted the corner of his shirt to wipe my tears.
