The Version of Me She Invented
I leaned against the kitchen doorway.
“You seem to know quite a lot about his wife,” I said.
Alexis rolled her eyes.
“Enough to understand the situation,” she replied.
Her voice shifted into exaggerated sympathy.
“She’s older, apparently very boring, and she doesn’t take care of herself anymore. Richard only stays with her because it’s easier than going through a divorce.”
She delivered the statement with bright confidence.
“He told me she trapped him when they were young,” Alexis continued. “Now he’s stuck with a woman who probably doesn’t even know what Botox is.”
Without realizing it, I reached up and touched my cheek.
I am thirty-seven years old.
Yes, there are a few faint lines around my eyes—the kind that come naturally after years of long workdays and far too little sleep.
But neglected?
Uninteresting?
That was a new description.
“Richard deserves better,” Alexis continued eagerly. “Someone younger. Someone who understands what he really needs.”
She leaned forward slightly.
“Not some tired housewife who probably thinks basic intimacy is adventurous.”
I observed her carefully.
“Perhaps his wife works,” I suggested.
Alexis burst into laughter.
“Oh please,” she said dismissively. “Richard told me she has some tiny job at a company somewhere. Probably a receptionist or something equally meaningless.”
That “tiny job” happened to be running the company I founded eight years ago.
A company with two hundred employees.
A company that paid for this house.
A company that had quietly covered Richard’s medical school tuition and the private clinic he opened three years earlier—a clinic that still hadn’t become profitable.
