“Go to the hotel, Mr. Vargas,” I spat. “Maybe they have a room for ‘Mrs. Vargas’ too. I hear she’s looking for company in the isolation ward.”
He moved toward me, a desperate look in his eyes, his hand reaching out as if to grab my arm. I stepped back, my eyes flashing with a warning that stopped him dead in his tracks.
“If you touch me, I will call the police and tell them you are knowingly attempting to infect me. In this state, that’s a felony. Do you want a prison cell on top of a clinic bed?”
He froze. The fear I had seen earlier—that raw, primal terror—doubled. He realized then that I wasn’t the wife he left behind. I wasn’t the woman who would cry and wait for an explanation. I was a stranger who held the keys to his entire existence, and I had already changed the locks.
He grabbed his phone and his ruined suitcase, his movements frantic and clumsy. He didn’t look back. He ran out the front door, leaving it wide open. I watched from the window as he scrambled into his car, the engine roaring to life as he sped away from the life he had so casually discarded.
I stood in the silence of my kitchen for a long time. The cold coffee was still leaking off the table. The yellow folder was still there, a silent witness to the carnage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize.
“Is he gone?”
It was the private investigator I had hired the moment Diego’s credit card flagged a ‘Luxury Spa’ in Miami instead of a ‘Deep Dish Pizza’ in Chicago.
“He’s gone,” I typed back. “Send the rest of the files to the lawyers. We’re going for full custody. I have the medical endangerment clause ready.”
I walked to the hallway and looked at the framed photo of our wedding day. Camila was standing right next to us, her hand on Diego’s shoulder, that “sisterly” smile on her face. I took the frame off the wall and didn’t break it. I didn’t throw it. I simply took a pair of kitchen shears and cut her out. Then I cut him out.
I was left with a jagged piece of paper showing only me in a white dress, looking hopeful.
I went to the bathroom and turned the shower on as hot as it would go. I stripped off my clothes and scrubbed my skin until it was red and raw. I scrubbed away the scent of his cologne, the memory of his “business trip” kiss, and the lingering shadow of the man who thought I was too weak to fight back.
When I stepped out, the mirrors were fogged. I wiped a circle in the steam and looked at myself. For 15 days, I had been the woman who was cheated on. For 15 days, I had been the victim of a cruel joke.
But as I looked at my reflection, I realized that Diego was right about one thing. It was a complicated business trip. Only, he wasn’t the one closing the deal.
I walked into my daughter’s room. she was sleeping soundly, her stuffed rabbit tucked under her arm. I sat on the edge of her bed and watched her breathe. She was safe. The house was clean. The bomb had been removed.
Tomorrow, the divorce papers would be served to whatever cheap motel Diego was hiding in. Tomorrow, the bank would freeze his secondary accounts. Tomorrow, the world would know exactly what kind of man he was.
But tonight, for the first time in fifteen days, I finally fell asleep. And I didn’t dream of the ocean. I didn’t hear her laugh. I heard only the beautiful, magnificent sound of a house that finally belonged to me again.
Far away, in a sterile hospital room, Camila waited for a phone call that would never come. And in a dark parking lot, Diego sat in his car, staring at a medical report that told him his future was a series of clinics and needles. He had gone to the beach to find a fantasy, but he had come home to a reality he could never escape.
He finally knew what kind of disease she had.
It was the same one he had: a soul that rotted from the inside out until there was nothing left to save.
