I walked into the kitchen and filled a glass.
When I returned, it had plenty of ice and no lemon at all.
She stared at it and exhaled slowly.
“Did Richard not train you?” she asked.
“How does Richard prefer things done?” I replied.
She leaned back with the patient expression of someone used to explaining simple things to people she considered beneath her.
“Efficiently,” she said. “And with proper respect for his guests.”
She Told Me Everything Without Knowing It
I rested against the kitchen doorway and let her keep talking.
It turned out Alexis had quite a lot to say.
She explained casually that she visited the house every Tuesday and Thursday while, as she put it, his wife was at work. Sometimes Saturdays too, if there was a book club meeting to keep the wife occupied.
I do not belong to a book club.
Two months before that afternoon, I had quietly changed my work schedule so that I was no longer leaving the house on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Richard did not know that either.
She then offered her observations about Richard’s wife, which she delivered with theatrical sympathy and surprising confidence for someone who had never actually met the woman she was describing.
Older, she said. Boring. Not taking care of herself. Trapped Richard when they were both young. Probably did not even understand what he needed anymore.
She said it all cheerfully, as if sharing harmless gossip over lunch with a friend.
I am thirty-seven years old.
I have a few fine lines near my eyes from years of long hours and not enough sleep. I would not call that neglect. I would call it living a full life while carrying more than my share of the weight.
She continued.
“Richard deserves better,” Alexis said with genuine enthusiasm. “Someone who actually understands him. Not some tired woman who probably thinks a quiet evening at home is exciting.”
I stayed quiet and let her finish.
“His wife has some small job somewhere,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “A receptionist or something like that. Probably contributes almost nothing.”
That small job was the company I had founded eight years earlier.
A company with two hundred employees across three locations.
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