My husband’s “work wife” bought the house next door. She just announced she’s pregnant and it’s…

The New Neighbor’s Surprise

My husband’s work wife just became our neighbor. I stood in my kitchen staring at the moving truck backing up into the house next to mine.

The house had finally been sold after the previous owner moved to Florida a couple months back. I baked cookies to welcome them to the neighborhood and walked over.

The front door was open with boxes everywhere.

I knocked on the frame and called out, “Hello, I’m from next door. I brought some cookies.” I heard footsteps coming from the back of the house, heels clicking on hardwood.

And then she appeared, blonde hair, perfectly styled, pencil skirt and silk blouse like she was dressed for the office, not for unpacking boxes. A smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Elena, right? Brad’s wife.”

It was Megan. The Megan.

My husband Brad complained about her all the time, saying she talked too much and always needed his help with projects. He said she wouldn’t leave him alone like a cockroach who never died.

She had even started calling herself his work wife just because they spent so much time together at work. “Surprise,” she said, and something about the way she said it made my skin crawl.

“Looks like we’re neighbors now.” Megan said surprise like she’d been waiting to say it, like she’d rehearsed it.

I kept replaying it in my head while I made dinner that night. The way she was dressed. The way she smiled like she’d already won something I didn’t know we were competing for.

Before we get into that, let me tell you how we got here. Brad and I had been married for 10 years. We met in college and got married 2 years after graduation.

We have two kids now. Susie was eight and Harry was six.

We’d worked hard to get to where we were. Saved every penny, made sacrifices. And last year, we finally bought our dream home in the neighborhood we’d always wanted.

Good schools, safe streets, friendly neighbors. Or so I thought.

Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe it really was just a coincidence.

Coincidence? I think not. Because coincidences don’t usually make your hands shake when you think about them.

I’d heard about Megan for years. Brad worked in finance and she was in accounting. According to him, she was the most annoying person in the entire company.

She talked constantly, laughed too loud at meetings, and showed up at his desk multiple times a day asking questions she could easily Google.

“She’s exhausting,” he’d say when he came home from work. “I don’t know how anyone deals with her. I felt bad for him, honestly.

He’d come home stressed out with a new thing Megan did that bothered him. And then she started calling herself his work wife. Brad told me about it in disgust.

Said she’d introduced herself to a new employee as Brad’s work, and he wanted to disappear into the floor. and she only continued saying it in meetings, in emails, to clients.

She’d refer to herself as his office better half and laugh. “That’s so inappropriate,” I said when he told me.

“That’s Megan,” he replied. “No boundaries, no self-awareness. She actually thinks it’s cute.”

“Why don’t you just talk to HR?” I asked. “And say what?”

“She’s annoying. She asks for help with work.”

“She calls herself my work wife. They’d laugh me out of the building.”

So, he dealt with it. and I trusted him without question because who complains that much about someone they’re actually interested in.

Brad came home from work a few hours after I met Megan and he stopped dead cold in his tracks when I told him she bought the house next door. His face did something I couldn’t read.

“That’s weird. She never mentioned she was house hunting. This is going to be a problem.”

I sighed. “Why? She’s just a neighbor now.”

“It’s probably a coincidence. Nice neighborhood. Good schools.”

“Makes sense.” He said it so casually, so dismissively, like I was being ridiculous.

But that didn’t make sense. Brad should have been annoyed. That’s the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about.

For 4 years, he complained about this woman non-stop. She was exhausting. She was clingy.

She wouldn’t leave him alone. And now she’s living 10 ft from our bedroom, and he shrugged it off like I told him we were out of milk.

Something was wrong with that math. Something didn’t add up. And I was going to pay very close attention until I figured out what.

It didn’t take long for Megan to start making herself at home. Not in her house, in mine.

The first time she knocked on our door was a Sunday afternoon. Brad was in the backyard grilling burgers and I was setting the table when the doorbell rang.

Megan stood there holding a bottle of wine and smiling. “I smelled the barbecue and thought I’d bring something to contribute. Hope that’s okay.”

I tried to be welcoming. I really did. Maybe Brad and I had judged her too harshly and she really was just lonely and looking for friends.

So, I handed her a plate and poured her a drink and made space for her at our table. But then he sat down next to Brad, not across from him where there was an empty chair next to him.

So close their elbows touched when they reached for the salt. “You don’t mind, do you, Elena?” she asked after she’d already sat down.

“Brad and I sit next to each other at every work lunch.” “Force of habit,” I minded.

But I smiled and said it was fine because what else could I say? Don’t sit next to my husband at my own dinner table. I’d sound insane.

Halfway through the meal, Susie spilled her juice. And before I could grab a napkin, Megan was already up.

“I’ve got it, sweetie,” she said, wiping down my daughter’s shirt with the towel I kept by the sink.

The towel she somehow knew was there even though she’d never been in my kitchen before.

“There. Good as new.”

“You know your daddy spills things at work all the time, too. I’m always cleaning up after him.”

“You clean up after daddy?” Susie asked.

“Someone has to. Megan laughed.”

“He’s helpless without his work wife. Right, Brad?”

Brad chuckled and shook his head, but he didn’t correct her. Didn’t say, “Actually, you’re not my work wife. Just let it sit there like it was true.”

After dinner, I started clearing plates and Megan jumped up to help. “You wash, I’ll dry,” she said, positioning herself at my sink like she belonged there.

“Brad, honey, can you keep the kids busy for a minute?” “Girl talk.” “Brad, honey.”

She called my husband, “Honey, in my house, and he just nodded and took the kids outside like it was normal.”

So, Megan said once we were alone, “How long have you and Brad been together?” “12 years, 10 married.”

“Wow, that’s a long time. Things must get pretty routine by now, huh?”

“We’re happy.” “Oh, I’m sure you are. I just mean it must be hard keeping things exciting after so long.

Brad told me you guys have been in a bit of a rut lately. I stopped washing. He said that.

“Don’t worry. He didn’t go into detail. He just mentioned things have been a little stale intimately.”

She said that last word quietly like we were sharing a secret. I told him that’s totally normal. Every marriage goes through dry spells because she knew so much about marriage.

My husband had talked to this woman about our intimate life, about our dry spells. I felt something cold settle in my chest, but I kept my voice steady.

“Brad and I are fine.” “Of course you are,” she said, patting my arm with a wet hand.

“I’m just saying if you ever need advice. I’ve been told I’m very good at keeping men interested.”

She smiled at me and for a second the mask slipped. I saw something underneath, something hungry.

Then Brad came back inside with the kids, and she was all warmth again, hugging Susie goodbye, high-fiving Harry, telling Brad she’d see him Monday with a look that lasted a beat too long.