Seven Years of Waiting, Never His Home

Seven years into her marriage, a wife finally learns she is pregnant on the same day she drives to the airport to collect her husband, Julian Goldsberry, after three years apart. He never appears. Instead, Maya Vance, the young woman he keeps, steps out and mistakes her for his secretary, ordering her to drive to a thirty-million-dollar villa in the suburbs. Along the way Maya brags openly about the apartments, the Lamborghini, the graduate school in New York, and the gifts Julian gives her.

At the villa, the wife finds no trace of Julian's own tastes, only Maya's pink world. Then she sees the necklace around Maya's neck, identical to the one Julian told her was a limited edition, and the schedule he keeps for Maya's classes and exams. The husband who remembers her dietary restrictions and warms her milk each night has simply been playing the same devoted role for someone else.

Three days later Julian returns, kissing her and offering her favorite wine, unaware of what she now knows and of the tiny life she carries.