My manager, Linda, came out from the back.
“Muriel, are you okay?”
I nodded.
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t.
My hands were shaking beneath the counter.
Jim stood there looking like a man who had suddenly forgotten how to breathe.
Claire held Tully close.
I looked at Jim.
“Take them home.”
He flinched.
“Muriel—”
“Take your son home.”
The word son seemed to make him smaller.
He picked up the boy’s jacket.
Claire looked at me.
“I am so sorry.”
I didn’t answer.
Not because I wanted to punish her.
Because I didn’t yet know what I believed.
They left.
Jim walked behind Claire, holding Tully’s hand.
I watched through the pharmacy window as they climbed into a truck I had helped him pay for.
Then I went into the stockroom.
Linda followed me.
She found me standing beside the shelves of cough syrup, staring at nothing.
“Muriel,” she said gently. “You can go home.”
I shook my head.
“I need to finish my shift.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
I had spent my entire adult life making sure everything was taken care of.
The farm.
The children.
The bills.
Jim’s appointments.
The Christmas presents.
The dinners.
The emergencies.
The little things nobody noticed until they weren’t done.
I knew how to keep going when life hurt.
But I didn’t know how to keep going when the person I had built my life around turned out to be a stranger.
That afternoon, I rang up customers.
I handed out prescriptions.
I answered questions about blood pressure medication.
And every time the front door chimed, my heart jumped.
At six o’clock, I locked the register.
At six-thirty, I drove home.
Our farmhouse sat beyond the county line, surrounded by fields that had belonged to Jim’s family for generations.
The porch swing creaked in the wind.
The kitchen window glowed yellow.
I sat in my truck for twenty minutes.
Then I went inside.
Jim was already home.
He stood in the kitchen wearing his feed mill shirt.
The pork chops were still in the refrigerator.
He looked at me.
“Muriel.”
I placed my purse on the counter.
“Don’t.”
He swallowed.
“Please let me explain.”
I stared at him.
“Did you have a child with another woman?”
He looked down.
“Yes.”
The word was barely audible.
I closed my eyes.
“Two?”
His head snapped up.
“What?”
I looked at him.
“There’s another profile. A little girl. Eleven years old. Same insurance. Same emergency contact.”
Jim’s face crumpled.
“Yes.”
I felt my knees weaken.
“Two children?”
He nodded.
I gripped the kitchen counter.
“Jim, we’ve been married forty-one years.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He began crying.
I had never seen him cry like that.
But I didn’t reach for him.
I simply asked the question that mattered.
“How long?”
He whispered.
“Thirteen years.”
Thirteen years.
Longer than our youngest child had been out of high school.
Longer than I had worked at the pharmacy.
Longer than the last dog we buried had been alive.
I looked at the man across from me.
And for the first time in forty-one years, I didn’t know whether I wanted him to stay in the room.
CLICK HERE CONTINUE TO READ>>Chapter 3: The House on Cedar Street
