The Other Mrs.

by Mary Kubica

There’s a misconception that rural living is better, safer than urban living, and yet it’s simply not true.

There’s nothing worse than lying in bed, restless, worrying about things I can’t do anything about.

Later that night, Will asked me in private, Don’t you think you were too harsh on him? And there it was. The first rift in our marriage.

Happenstance, he called it. Everything happens for a reason, he said.

For an instant, she’s demure.

Because what the other woman gets is another woman’s table scraps, never the full meal.

She shakes her head. She doesn’t remember. Because it didn’t happen.

How well we think we know those closest to us. And then, what a shock to the system it is to find out we don’t know them at all.