Chapter 1: The Front Seat
My husband buckled another woman into the front seat of my car while I stood in the freezing Manhattan rain like a stranger he had accidentally inconvenienced.
Not a cab. Not a company
The I helped pay for when David Sterling’s real estate firm was nearly collapsing. The same car where we once ate cheap takeout fries because we were too broke and exhausted to sit inside a restaurant. The same car where he had held my hand years ago and promised, “When I make it, Catherine, you’ll never sit behind anyone again.”
But that evening, outside his glass office tower, David opened the passenger door for his young secretary, Cecilia Moore, and said, “Cat, get in the back. She gets carsick.”
I stared at him through rain-soaked lashes.
“David,” I said carefully, “that is my seat.”
Chapter 2: Sensitive…
Cecilia stood beneath his umbrella, perfectly dry, one hand pressed dramatically to her forehead. Her beige coat was buttoned wrong, her glossy nails wrapped around a purse that looked too expensive for a secretary’s salary.
“I can sit in the back, Mr. Sterling,” she whispered. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”
David looked at her with a softness I had not seen directed at me in years.
“You’re not causing trouble,” he said.
Then he turned to me, and the softness disappeared.
“Catherine is just being sensitive.”
Sensitive.
That was his favorite word when my pain became inconvenient. Sensitive meant jealous. Sensitive meant irrational. Sensitive meant I was supposed to swallow disrespect and call it maturity.
“I am your wife,” I said. “You are asking me to sit behind your secretary in my own car.”
