The Day a Stranger Walked Into My Home and Accidentally Revealed the Truth About My Marriage

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.