Chapter 4 - What Camille Didn’t Know
Camille was not the first betrayal.
She was simply the visible one.
Arthur had been drifting for almost a year. Longer, if I was honest. Late meetings. New passwords. A phone that flipped face down whenever I entered the room. Expensive gifts that never appeared on our shared statements because there were no shared statements left worth reading.
I found out about Camille through a pediatric appointment reminder.
Not for our family.
For Oliver.
It appeared on Arthur’s tablet one night while he was in the shower. Camille Mercer. Oliver Mercer. Prenatal follow-up. Family consultation.
At first, I thought it was business. Arthur often worked with client households where corporate and family trust issues overlapped.
Then I saw the message underneath.
He asked again if he can call you Dad after the baby comes.
I sat there for a long time with the tablet glowing in my hands.
Camille was early thirties, polished and soft-spoken, the kind of woman who looked apologetic even when she was taking something. She had a son from a previous relationship and was pregnant with Arthur’s baby. She did not know I paid the rent. She did not know the furniture was mine. She did not know Eleanor had already started referring to her as “the beginning of Arthur’s real family.”
When I finally confronted Arthur, he did not deny it.
That was the part that offended me most.
He looked relieved.
As if my discovery had saved him the effort of confession.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way,” he said.
“No one ever does.”
“Camille needs me.”
I looked around the bedroom I had furnished, inside the apartment I leased, after a twelve-year marriage I had carried through debt, grief, his son’s adolescence, and the death of my own hope for motherhood.
“And what did I need?” I asked.
May you like
He had no answer.
He never did when the question required him to see me clearly.
