September 18, 1944

Is that what John has felt for the past sixteen years every time we made love? The notion almost enrages me. How dare he experience something so mind-bending while I felt . . . nothing like that!

How dare he not even care!

“Men,” I spit beneath my breath, my tone filled with derision as I scrub angrily at the tomato sauce caked on the countertop from tonight’s dinner.

“What, Mama?” Sera asks from behind me, startling me so badly I let out a screech and nearly drop dead from a heart attack.

Twirling around, I gasp her name, hand over heart as I try to breathe through the fright she gave me.

She smiles at me sheepishly. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby,” I breathe, letting out a laugh. “I didn’t hear you come downstairs.”

John appears in the kitchen a moment later, concern etched into the crow’s feet around his eyes. His hair is mussed, and I can smell the whiskey leaking from his pores from here.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes, Sera just frightened me. Everything is fine and dandy,” I assure, my annoyance trickling back in now that he’s here.

Ronaldo used his mouth on me a second time after we . . . did whatever the hell we did. It was too carnal to call it lovemaking. Too animalistic.

Afterward, he had to leave, though it appeared to pain him as much as it did me.

It left me plenty of time to quickly scribble in my journal about the awakening I had just experienced before locking it in the safe behind a photograph of me in the hallway. Ever since John threatened to read my journal, I refuse to even bring it out around him, and he knows that to be the case. Rather than becoming more suspicious, he’s only ashamed. He knows I no longer trust him, and truthfully, I’m relieved that my sordid love affair will never be discovered.

At least not while I’m alive.

After, I bathed the smell of my sins off me, freshened my hair and makeup, and redressed with a more modest set of undergarments—and with my underwear over the girdle this time.

Sacrificing my comfort to appear sexy is a privilege only for Ronaldo.

I completed all this by the time Sera came home from the deli after school, oblivious to the awful crime her mother had just committed.

I was floating on clouds all day until John came home hours after his shift should’ve ended. His dinner on the table had long since grown cold by the time he stumbled through the door, his eyes bloodshot and hair a mess. While he promised he hadn’t been gambling, he refused to tell me where he had been, and he reeked of whiskey.

He didn’t smell of another woman, but frankly, I would almost prefer he have an affair than waste all our money.

Regardless, it devolved into another fight. Sera was thankfully doing her homework in her room when it got heated, but it resulted in his slamming me against the wall and growling in my face to “mind my own goddamn business.”

“Take care of our daughter and be a perfect little wife. Those are your only two duties as a woman.”

It was dehumanizing, and I saw red. My palm connected with his face, and in return, the back of his greeted mine.

I shouldn’t have hit him first. I know that, yet I was still in shock that he had hit me back. In our entire relationship, John had never hit me. He’d never raped me, either. Yet that’s exactly the man he has become.

Despite my budding relationship with Ronaldo, it was devastating to experience the exact moment that I gave up on my husband for good. I loved him for sixteen years. I stood by him in happiness and in turmoil. Through the gift of our beautiful daughter, and the death of any future children.

All for it to crumble away as if it was nothing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you scream like that,” John comments, chuckling softly and bringing me back to the conversation.

You would if you ever tried.

I’ve been seething about that since the moment John suggested we make love tonight to “resolve our tension.” The thought of lying with him after having lain with Ronaldo earlier makes me sick to my stomach.

Guilt should be eating me alive at this moment, yet I can’t help but look at my husband as if he’s the intruder.

“I don’t think you’ve ever heard me scream like that, either,” I agree, forcing myself to keep the mood light purely for Sera’s sake. “Did you need anything, dear?” I direct my question toward my daughter, pointedly ignoring her father.

“Can I have some ice cream?”

I glance at the clock hanging on the wall, noting that it’s after nine p.m. Normally far too late for sweets, but I don’t have the heart to deny her at this moment.

“Sure, baby. But!” I hold up a finger, pausing for dramatic effect. “Don’t get used to this. You know better.”

She’s too excited to care about my warning and skips toward the freezer with a blinding smile stretched across her face.

Instantly, my aching heart eases, and though I’ve begun to loathe my husband, I sure do love the little human he helped me create. And for that, I’m grateful for him anyway.