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Eliza is on the subway, on her way home from a board meeting at the orphanage, when she gets a text from Angelica. Hey, it reads, have you been online today?
No?, Eliza replies, frowning to herself, her mind still back at the orphanage. They’d run out of time at the meeting, and she’d forgotten to mention the minor changes to next year’s budget. She’d have to send out an e-mail about that when she got home.
Okay, Angelica replies. I’m gonna meet you at your house
Eliza stares down at her phone, her chest suddenly tight. Is everything alright? Nobody’s hurt, are they?
No, nothing like that, Angelica texts. No one is hurt. I’ll see you soon
Alright, see you soon xx, Eliza replies. She locks her phone and refuses to pull up her news app. She stares out the dark windows of the subway car and refuses to panic. Everything will be fine, she tells herself. Everything is fine.
-
Angelica is waiting for her at the house, just like she said she’d be. She must have used her spare key to get in, because she’s sitting at the kitchen island when Eliza comes inside. Angelica looks uncharacteristically grave and a little red around the eyes, like she’s been crying - or holding her fingers there, trying to stop herself from crying. Eliza knows her sister, knows her every expression, and seeing that look on Angelica’s face makes her blood run cold.
“What’s wrong?” Eliza asks immediately. “What happened? Is it dad?”
“No, it’s not dad,” Angelica says. She lays her hands out on the counter and spreads her fingers apart. “I don’t know if I should be the one to tell you this, Eliza... but I don’t want you to be the last person to know.”
Eliza can feel pressure building in her temples. “Tell me what?” she asks.
Angelica takes a deep breath. “Can you come sit with me?” she says, holding out a hand. Eliza takes her hand and moves to sit on the stool next to her sister, turning to face her.
Angelica stays quiet for a long moment, looking down at their joined hands. This scares Eliza, too. Angelica is never this quiet. “Please just tell me,” Eliza pleads.
“The Post ran an article this morning,” Angelica begins, haltingly. “Alexander wrote it.”
“What was it about?” Eliza asks, holding Angelica’s hand tighter, trying to ground herself.
Angelica looks up at her sister, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “It was about an affair. He had an affair.”
Eliza feels as though her lungs have been ripped from her chest. The moment seems to freeze over, and she struggles to breathe. Eliza prays to God that this is a nightmare that she’ll wake from, frightened and shaky, but warm and safe in Alexander’s arms. She prays that she heard Angelica wrong, and that this will turn out to be a terrible misunderstanding. She prays that time never moves forward, so that she doesn’t have to live with the consequences of this. “He... what?” Eliza chokes out.
“I’m so sorry,” Angelica tells her, her words rushing out in one long, panicked breath. “I’m so sorry he did this to you. I just... I realized when I didn’t hear from you this morning that you didn’t know. And you need to know.”
Eliza closes her eyes. She breathes. One in, one out. One in, one out. One in, one out, until she almost feels like a person again, instead of a shaking mass of meat and muscle and pain.
“Thank you for telling me,” Eliza whispers. “I... do you have the article?”
“Yes,” Angelica says, threading their fingers together. “I do. Are you sure that you want to read it now? Because you can wait until you’re ready. You don’t have to read it at all, if you don’t want to.”
Eliza can feel her mouth quivering, the sides of her lips turned down and tears clouding her eyes. She wants to say, No, of course I’m not ready to read it. I’ll never be ready. Instead, she says, “There’s no point in waiting, is there? When he comes home...” She pauses here, knocked off-kilter by the thought of Alexander walking through the front door of their home just like he has for the past ten years. The world is irreparably changed, but it has the nerve to keep spinning. The sun will still set, the tides will still ebb and flow, and Alexander will still come home. Alexander, who had an affair. Who told the world about about it.
Eliza wants to be sick.
“By the time he comes home,” she says, her voice shaking, “I want to know exactly what he’s done.”
“Okay,” Angelica says, nodding at her sister. “Okay.” She disentangles their fingers so that she can take her phone out of her back pocket. It’s only a few moments before she’s handing the phone to Eliza, open to the article on the Post’s website.
Angelica hesitates for a moment. “Do you want me to stay... or go?” she asks, quietly.
“I’d... I'd like to be alone for a few minutes,” Eliza replies, staring down at the screen but not seeing anything, not yet. Trying to preserve the last few moments of not knowing. She looks up at her sister. “But just... don’t leave me, okay?”
“Never,” Angelica says, reaching out and tucking Eliza’s hair behind her ear. “I’ll be in the family room.” And then, with a backwards look at Eliza, she turns and walks out of the kitchen. Eliza waits until she hears Angelica settle herself on the couch and the rustle of a book opening before she dares to look down at the phone again.
Reading Alexander’s confession makes Eliza’s stomach churn and her eyes water. He denies the rumors of professional misconduct that have been flying around. Eliza lets out a choked laugh. He's always been too concerned with what people think of him. Too ready to defend himself.
He lays out in his transactions with James Reynolds, and then he describes, in harrowing, explicit detail, the reason for them: his affair with twenty-four-year-old Maria Reynolds. How he went to her house. How he brought her to his. How he slept with her in his marriage bed.
He says that even though he knew that he was making a mistake every time he saw her, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her. He had believed that she was in love him, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
This, more than anything else, is what finally breaks Eliza’s composure. He didn’t want to hurt her. She heaves out a great sob, her body shaking with the effort of not coming apart at the seams - and then she is crying, harder than she ever has in her life, choking on her tears and wrapping her arms around her stomach, as if she can keep herself from falling completely apart through sheer will.
Distantly, just audible over the roaring in her ears, she hears footsteps on the kitchen tile. “Oh, Eliza,” she hears Angelica say, and then her sister’s arms are around her, carding through her hair and rubbing soothing circles on her back. “I know, I know,” she repeats, her lips close to Eliza’s ear, and this just makes Eliza cry harder, because as close as she and her sister are, Angelica doesn’t know. She loves Alexander, Eliza knows. Everyone loves him, it seems: Angelica and John Laurens, Peggy and her father, Eliza herself. And, Eliza thinks with sick twist in her stomach, maybe even Maria Reynolds.
Angelica can’t know, not really, because she’s not Alexander’s wife. She didn’t spend years building a life with him, and raising children with him, and falling asleep next to him every night with his head pillowed on her shoulder. Eliza did, and now she feels the weight of everything they’ve built looming over her, ready to come crashing down in jagged, splintered pieces that she’ll never be able to put back together.
She wonders, with a sick feeling of shock, what they’re going to tell the children.
The children, she thinks, and forces herself to breathe deeply. Eliza begins to count out her breaths in sets of five. One, two, three, four, five. You are fine. One, two, three, four, five. You have to stop crying. One, two, three, four, five. The children need to be picked up. One, two, three, four, five. Dinner needs to be made. Baths need to be taken. They will need to be tucked him. One, two, three, four, five. You can cry later. When there is not so much to do. When there is time.
She slowly lifts her head. Wipes away her tears with a shaky hand. Meets Angelica’s worried eyes. “I’m fine,” she says, trying to smile.
“Eliza, you’re not fine,” Angelica tells her, stroking her hair.
“Well, no,” Eliza admits. “I’m not fine. But I have to pretend to be.” She casts watery eyes to the oven clock. “I need to pick the kids up from the bus stop soon. I need to get John from daycare.”
“Do you want me to stay? Help you get the kids?” Angelica asks, holding her sister’s tear-streaked face in her hands.
Eliza’s tears threaten to start anew. “Please don’t leave me, Angelica,” she says, and she’s never wanted anything as much in her entire life as she wants her sister’s strong, comforting presence right now.
“Never, ever,” Angelica assures her, pulling Eliza into her arms and holding her close.
Eliza presses her face to Angelica’s shoulder and does her best to breathe.
-
Angelica only agrees to leave after Eliza assures her three times that she will be okay that night. She will be fine. She says it as much to convince herself as her sister.
Eliza watches Angelica’s car pull out of the driveway. Honestly, she doesn’t want Angelica here when Alexander gets home. Alexander had called her earlier, and Angelica had almost snatched the phone out of Eliza’s hand and hit “Accept” before Eliza could stop her. Instead, she had left the phone on the counter to ring, and Angelica had glared at it anew with each successive call.
Eliza is afraid that if Angelica is there, she’ll let her sister fight this battle for her. The thought of looking Alexander in the face makes Eliza want to vomit, but Angelica would have no problem telling Alexander in no uncertain terms what she thinks of what he has done. Part of Eliza wishes that she could just stand back and let Angelica - verbose, quick-witted, passionate Angelica - say everything that Eliza herself will struggle to put into words, everything that will get tangled on her tongue and come out ineloquent and meaningless.
Eliza is afraid that if she can’t articulate herself quickly enough, or with enough eloquence, that Alexander will start talking. She’s scared that he’ll find some way to talk her down from the precipice she’s standing on, to dull the sharp edge of her hurt and rage into something impotent and useless. She feels powerless enough as it is, and she knows the only things keeping her on her feet are stubbornness and righteous anger. If Alexander can talk her out of that rage, she'll have nothing left but the deep gulf of sadness that has opened up in her chest.
Eliza cooks dinner and feeds the children, who are, thankfully, blissfully unaware of what their father has done. She makes sure that they all get baths. She tucks them in and reads three separate bedtime stories in three different bedrooms, the lights dim and her voice calm and clear.
Alexander is late coming home. Eliza wishes that she could say she is surprised.
When she finally hears his key in the front door, it’s past ten o’clock. Eliza is sitting at the kitchen table, a full cup of tea gone cold beside her.
Alexander walks into the kitchen, and it’s like looking at a stranger. She sees him as if for the first time: Just a few inches taller than her, deceptively strong. Strong enough to pick her up and carry her to their bed. His dark hair is graying prematurely at his temples, but he still wears a bun high on his head. He moves slowly as he puts his bag on the floor, his dark eyes unfathomable even as they bore into her.
“Eliza,” he says, his voice hoarse. He must mean to say something more, because he always has something to say, always has the perfect words. But he goes silent, unsure of what to say next. Eliza can read it in his face. She’s been his wife for a decade, after all. She used to know everything about him.
“Alexander,” Eliza responds, saying his name with more anger and disappointment and sadness than she ever has before. She sees Alexander’s eyes widen, sees him open his mouth and then close it, his lips pressed together tightly. “Come sit down.”
He does, sitting stiffly in the chair across from her. The light hanging above them casts his face into sharp relief, and Eliza sees the pain etched onto it, the telltale tremor of his mouth, the way that his under-eye circles are darker than usual. It doesn’t make her feel any better. “Eliza, I -,” he begins, but she holds up a shaky hand to stop him.
“I need to speak first,” she says, hurrying to get the words out. “Please.”
He nods jerkily, never taking his eyes from her, like he thinks she might disappear if he looks away.
Eliza stares back at him. “I want to know...” she says, and then stops. What does she want to know, exactly? What he was thinking when he decided to sleep with another woman? If he still thinks of himself as her husband? Why she had to find out from Angelica and not from him? Why he thought it was more important to explain himself to the rest of the world than to her, to his wife, the mother of his children, the person he had hurt the most? “I don’t know what I want to know,” she admits with a choked-off sob. “Nothing you say to me is going to change anything. You’ve ruined our lives.”
“Eliza,” Alexander says, his voice verging on desperate. “Eliza, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to find out like this. I didn’t think -”
“You didn’t think!” Eliza says, cutting him off, her eyes filling with tears. “Isn’t that the whole problem, Alexander? You were so caught up in doing what you wanted, in doing what was best for you, that you didn’t think about anyone else! You didn’t think about the kids! You didn’t think about me, Alexander, and you promised me, in front of God and our family, that you would always - that you would always -” Eliza almost can’t choke out the words, but she manages to push them past her leaden tongue, “- that you would always love me. That you would always take care of me.”
“I know, I know I did,” Alexander says, his face ashen. Eliza can see that he wants to reach out to her, but can’t quite bring himself to cross the distance between them. “I do love you, Eliza, and if I could take everything back I would. Please believe that.”
Eliza is crying freely now, but she manages to let out a mirthless laugh. “That doesn’t mean anything,” she says, rising from her seat. She suddenly feels constricted and restless, like if she sits still for another second she’s going to come out of her skin. “You can’t take it back. You did this to us, and then you told the whole world about it.
“Everything we’ve built together is ruined,” she continues. Her hands are shaking, so she balls them into fists. “How can I ever lay in our bed again without thinking about how you slept with another woman in it? I don’t know you anymore!” Eliza can hear her voice rising, reaching near-hysterical pitch, but she can’t seem to stop herself. “What are we going to tell the children, Alexander? How are you going to explain this to them?”
“Betsey,” Alexander says, softly, like he’s afraid of speaking any louder. “We can get through this.”
Eliza stares at him. Her fingers are numb and lifeless, her fingernails biting into her skin. She feels weightless, adrift, and the man who should be her anchor is sitting across from her, eyes downcast and face contrite. The worst part is that he’s still her family; he’s still the husband with whom she’s spent years, the lover with whom she’s shared intimate thoughts and touches, the best friend who has made her laugh so hard her stomach hurt. Eliza wishes to God that she could turn it off - wishes that she could box up her love for him and put it away so that she doesn’t have to feel conflicted and guilty about hating him.
“What are we going to do, Alexander?” Eliza asks him, wide-eyed and trembling, because she doesn’t know who else to ask.
Alexander is perched on the edge of his seat, unnaturally still. “I don’t know,” he tells her. It might be the most honest thing he’s said to her in months, and Eliza comes apart for the second time that day.
Great, terrible, heaving sobs wrack her body, leaving her breathless and lightheaded. She can feel hot tears running down her cheeks and she folds in on herself, covering her face with her hands in a futile effort to pretend that she’s not cracking open. Every part of her body feels disconnected from the others, useless and beyond her control, piloted by grief and anger instead of by her conscious thoughts. Her knees start to buckle, but she doesn’t bother trying to stop herself from crumpling to the ground. She doesn’t even realize that Alexander is out of his seat until he lays a hand on her elbow.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieks, jerking her arm away from him like she’s been been burned. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m sorry,” Alexander says quickly, backing away from her, and she’s not sure if he means for touching her, or for sleeping with someone else, or for sharing his shame with the world. His eyes are red and glassy like he’s holding back tears; he’s pushed his glasses up into his hair, which Eliza always thought was endearing. She can’t bear to look at him.
She tells him this. She watches the meager bit of light was left in his face flicker out.
Eliza rises from the floor as gracefully as she can, wiping at her eyes. “It’s late,” she says without looking at Alexander. “I’m going to bed.”
She doesn’t bother to add the alone, and Alexander doesn’t try to follow her up the stairs. Eliza feel his eyes on her as she climbs. She refuses to look back at him.
-
Eliza lays in bed texts Angelica that she’s fine. It’s fine. She answers concerned, plaintive messages from each of her family members, assuring them that she’s alright and that she’ll see them soon. She ignores e-mails from the press asking for comment.
She pulls the sheets up to her chin and tries not to think about the fact that Alexander touched another woman in this bed, put his hands and mouth on her like he had done to Eliza a hundred times before, and but she can’t put the thought out of her mind. She thinks wryly that she’s been through enough today, and that she’s just torturing herself. Still, Eliza pictures a faceless girl with her hands tangled in Alexander’s hair, her legs wrapped around Alexander’s waist, whispering his name as she comes. She pictures the girl’s smooth, slick skin pressed close to Alexander, their heavy breathing echoing in the bedroom. Eliza wants to scrub her own skin raw.
It takes her a long time to fall asleep. When she does, she dreams of a white canvas tent in her parents’ backyard, adorned with flowers and starry lights. His warm hand is holding hers. Her dress is heavy, her feet hurt, and there are still hours to go before they will alone, God, alone, but she feels so light. Joyful. She dreams of swaying to gentle music, one of his hands holding hers and the other low on her back, keeping her close and safe. She dreams of smiling so brightly that she doesn’t think the happiness will ever fade from her face.
She doesn’t remember her dream in the morning.