Mutual Transgressions

There are four of us now.

I’m sure he never thought that we’d find each other like this, but here we are. Of course, his implicit narcissism is how I found him out in the first place-he kept his literal little black book in the nightstand next to the same bed where our shared sins had played out.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? That being the other woman, I would expect there to be no one else? That my lips were the only ones he was kissing, even as he told his wife he was working late? I realize now how naive I was in my expectations, but that doesn’t mitigate the abject misery I feel. I imagine, though, that it’s a fraction of what she’ll experience when she finds out. At this point, the rest of us are just collateral damage.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. We were supposed to create a new life for ourselves, a better one, far away from the circumstances that lead us into each other’s arms in the first place. We were going to be happy-or at least that’s what we told ourselves. Now I know it was all a delusion, motivated by our own inadequacies and the mistaken belief that we could fix them in a sphere of mutual lies.

The only good thing to come out of all of the deceit is the $20,000 sitting in the safe right now. A safe that he gave me the combination to, since apparently he didn’t think I was ever going to figure out his game. I knew about the money because we were going to use it as a down payment on the house we planned to buy together...though at this point, who knows if he ever truly planned to go through with it. In hindsight, taking out a mortgage with one woman isn't really something you’d do when you’re planning a wedding with another. Or another two, to be specific.

While he was in the shower that night, I was rifling through his nightstand-or at least, the one he uses at my place-looking for the business card of the listing agent. Since his divorce was almost finalized (or so I believed at the time), I was eager to get a head start on putting an offer in before someone else got the chance. That kind of perfection doesn’t last long.

When I couldn’t find the card in the mix of bedside detritus, I decided to look inside the little black book he kept his business notes in. There were notes, alright. Pages of names, phone numbers, birthdays, likes and dislikes-for people I didn’t recognize, all of whom were women. Several pages at the beginning were crossed out, but on the sixth or seventh page I found my own biography, reduced to laconic pieces of data:

“Allergic to shellfish. Likes peonies, not roses. Keeps a spare key under a brick by the door. Security system code is 0724. Works Monday-Thursday…” as I read the details of my life and preferences enumerated in his scrappy handwriting, a thought struck me. I turned the page and found another name...not marked out. Then one that was. And another. Then one more that was not. The rest of the pages were blank.

As I sat there, heart racing, I heard the shower turn off. I carefully placed the unassuming book back into the nightstand drawer and crawled into bed with a magazine. By the time he joined me, my face was impassive even as my thoughts were spinning.

I’d never had reason to question him or his whereabouts-I knew he was married. Even though they were separated, they were still living together to save money-or at least that’s what he told me. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

The next day when he went to work, I grabbed the book out of the nightstand and started looking up the other names on Facebook. Some of the first ones-the ones that were crossed out-seemed to be in relationships currently. Others were single. All of them bore a slight resemblance to me in one way or another.

I was already intimately familiar with his wife’s profile-I’d stalked her early on-but he’d always told me he wasn’t into social media. It didn’t strike me as odd at the time, both because people in certain industries try to stay away from having an online presence and because I was sure he didn’t want his wife to somehow discover our relationship. Now, though, it seemed like the more likely possibility was that he didn’t want all of us to find out about each other.

As I was scrolling through pictures of the woman whose name came after mine in the book, I found a lone photo of her with him, dated a few months after we had gotten together. In it, they appeared to be at a restaurant or bar, and the location was marked as the next town over, where she lived. Beyond that, there was no public evidence of him on her sparse profile, but her relationship status read “engaged”.

At that point, I skipped to the next page that was not crossed through in the now-encouraging black ‘X’. This woman lived in the same town as me and appeared to work at a doctor’s office. She also had a young child.

Up to that point, as devastated as I was, I knew that we were all adults and that our decisions-as well as the consequences of them-were ultimately our own. Being the other woman doesn’t leave a lot of moral ground to stand on. But then, when I saw that little face with big, innocent eyes staring back at me, I was heartbroken. The ramifications of my own actions were already starting to settle in, but now I was fuming. How could he do this to a woman with a child, to the child herself?

Further down her page, I saw several pictures of them together, some of them recent-at the zoo, eating lunch at one of our favorite places, lounging at home watching a movie...the everyday actions of a family. Her profile said she was “in a relationship”. Thank God for small mercies.

While I was carrying out my internet investigation, I got a text from him that said he hoped I was having a good day. In lieu of hurling my phone across the room, I opted to not respond. I had to decide what I was going to do before I even thought about confronting him with my discoveries-or not.

As I sat there clicking through picture after picture of this woman’s child and life, I realized I had to do something. I couldn’t just let her-let any of us-continue to be used at the behest of a man who clearly had no semblance of morality left. I understood that I was not blameless either, but I had fully believed his marriage was over, that he was looking forward to building a life with me just as I was with him. He was supposed to be a fresh start, not another disappointment.

Then a single, clear thought broke through my fury-the money. There was $20,000 sitting in the same room I was. When he brought the safe to me, he said it was because he didn’t want his wife to get the money during their “divorce”. Now I wasn’t even sure he was telling me the truth about that, or what the money was really for and where it came from.

At the front of his little black book, I flipped back to the “In case of loss, please return to…” at the beginning, which I hadn’t paid attention to before. On it, there was a number I didn’t recognize. At the risk of it connecting to him directly and cluing him in to my find, I decided to dial the number. After a few rings, a woman picked up.

“Hello?” she asked tentatively. After a few beats of stunned silence as I tried to figure out what I was going to say, I decided to just tell her who I was and why I was calling. She listened wordlessly as I told her about my relationship with her husband and finding out that I wasn’t the only other one.

For a short while after I finished, she didn’t respond. Finally, she said she’d suspected as much-the stereotypical long nights at work and emotional detachment had certainly been red flags, but ultimately she thought they were about as happy as most couples.

Instead of being angry, though, she sounded resigned. She said she’d considered leaving before, but there was never any concrete reason to do so. Now she had it.

After that, I sent messages on Facebook to the other two women explaining the situation. The woman who claimed to be engaged to him wrote back immediately. She was clearly livid, and blocked me after she said her piece. Not long after, though, she sent me another message wanting to compare details of the lies he’d told us. Apparently he had been seeing her since shortly after we’d met, and had only recently proposed. They were talking about getting married in the next year and moving to a different city to get away from his “ex-wife”.

The other woman took longer to respond. Just when I was sure I wouldn’t hear from her before he got off work, she wrote me back. She was shocked. Stunned. They were supposed to be a real family someday. She had been “dating” him for six months now, and her daughter adored him. She said it would break her heart to have to explain his absence from their lives-that the girl’s father hadn’t been in the picture since she was a year old, and she had loved having a male figure in her life. She was also embarrassed that she had no clue that he was married, much less that he was involved with other women. She thought he was “the one.”

I asked both of them if they were interested in meeting me at a nearby park. They were skeptical of getting together with their boyfriend/fiancé’s other mistresses, but in the end they acquiesced. I think they were at least a little curious, and probably thought, as I did, that nothing could be lost at this point by cooperating. We were weirdly, irrevocably united through our collective anger and devastation.

When I arrived at the park, I recognized a woman sitting on a bench by herself as the mom whose child was undoubtedly one of the most innocent-and injured-parties in all of this. As I walked up to her, I saw the other woman getting out of her car. We formed a literal version of the figurative triangle we were in, and none of us said anything. What do you say to someone whose pain you simultaneously know inherently and played a part in causing?

As that realization hit me, I silently reached into my bag and pulled out two envelopes. I’d already dropped the third off at the house he shared with his wife on my way over. I handed one to each of them and walked away, tears of regret and heartache burning my eyes.

When I got home, I placed the little black book inside the now-empty safe and set it outside next to the brick that no longer hid a key under it. I shut the door behind me and turned the newly-changed locks into place, then drew a deep breath as I set out to fix my life.