My Husband Built a Shrine to His Ex — So I Froze Them Both Out

Part 2

Dinner that evening was an exercise in sophisticated, psychological torture.

The storm raged on aggressively outside, rattling the tall, drafty windows of the dining room.

Inside, the massive crystal chandelier cast a harsh, unforgiving light over the long mahogany table.

I sat perfectly straight at the foot of the table, while Greg sat at the head.

Heather sat intimately to his right.

She had been bathed and dressed in one of my old gowns because her trunks had fallen into a flooded ditch during her chaotic journey.

I had instructed my maid to alter a dress I hadn’t worn in years, a pale, shimmering blue silk.

It was a dress Greg had bought for me during our first year in London.

I had worn it proudly, genuinely thinking the color pleased him.

Seeing it on Heather, I realized the horrifying truth with a sickening thud in my stomach.

The bodice, which had always been a fraction too tight across my broad ribs, fit her delicate frame perfectly.

The pale color made her violet eyes luminous and striking.

He hadn’t bought it for me at all.

He had bought it because it was exactly the kind of dress Heather would have worn.

I had been walking around wearing the ghost of his dead romance.

Greg was completely transformed.

The quiet, stoic man I had lived with for three years was gone, replaced by a vibrant, animated stranger.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, a blatant breach of etiquette he would usually silently condemn.

His eyes, usually a flat, stormy gray, were bright and alive.

He asked Heather about Paris, about mutual acquaintances I had never heard of, and he actually laughed.

It was a deep, resonant, chest-rumbling sound.

I stared at him.

In three years, I could count the number of times he had smiled on one hand.

I felt entirely, profoundly inadequate.

I was suddenly hyper-aware of my broad hands, the small ink stain near my thumbnail, and the practical, severe cut of my dark green evening gown.

Heather took a delicate sip of her wine and mentioned how beautiful the estate looked.

She casually remarked that the white roses near the old fountain had survived, thanking me for keeping them.

She explained, her expression entirely innocent, that she and Greg had planted them when they were young, right before she married someone else.

I didn’t look at her.

I slowly turned my head and looked down the long expanse of the table at my husband.

He was staring at his plate, his jaw clenched, unable to meet my eyes.

Every memory of the last three years began to recontextualize itself in a violent, dizzying rush.

Those pale blooms had never been his favorite choice.

The lavender soap wasn’t because it suited me.

The blue dress wasn’t a gift for his wife.

I had spent three years meticulously building a house, brick by brick, entirely unaware that I was constructing a living shrine to another woman.

The humiliation burned in the back of my eyes and clawed at my throat, but beneath the humiliation, a slow, freezing anger began to pool in my stomach.

I stood up abruptly, my heavy chair scraping loudly against the floorboards.

I politely excused myself, citing fatigue from balancing the ledgers, and walked out of the room with my back perfectly straight.

I walked to my bedchamber, locked the door, and threw my expensive lavender soap directly into the burning fireplace.

I watched it melt, filling the room with a sickly, overwhelming perfume that I swore to myself I would never wear again.

If everything you built your marriage on was just a monument to another woman, how exactly do you burn the house down?