The Girl I Used to Be, Heidi Hostetter [free e books to read .txt] 📗

in to kiss her husband. He smelled like the spicy aftershave she liked, the kind he used after a fresh shower. Oddly, the scent seemed to have once again lasted all day. “We have something to celebrate.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“I heard from Georgiana Brockhurst today. She wants to talk to me about ideas for her family’s Christmas portrait.” Jill sprinkled salt into the pasta water, feeling almost professional. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Christmas?” Marc repeated as he lowered the stack of mail. “I thought you were still working on getting me an invitation to the wedding. I’d expected that we’d be going.”

Jill turned to face him, honestly confused. “I told you this before, Marc. Libby’s bridal portraits were not part of the wedding. Even if they were, I’d be a vendor at the wedding, not a guest. We were never going to be invited.”

“So you said.” Marc frown deepened. “But I thought you understood how important an invitation is to me, to my company. I told you I’d been trying to break into that social circle for years. If you had brought an invitation home, that would have been something to celebrate.”

On the stove, the tomato sauce plunked against the skillet lid and Jill adjusted the flame. Marc had been short-tempered lately and Jill had assumed the reason was lack of sleep. She imagined him spending restless nights on a cot at the construction trailer on the Berkshire site, working extra hours just to get the project off the ground. For the past few days she’d been choosing her words carefully and had ignored most of his moods, but not this time. The Brockhurst phone call was too important.

Jill straightened to meet his scowl. “Marc, this is big news for me. Georgiana Brockhurst has seen my work and likes it enough to consider me for another project. I’m really excited about this.”

“We’ll celebrate when you do something worthy of celebration,” Marc muttered as he tore open an envelope. “Until then, you’re wasting your time. And my money.”

The pasta water rolled to a boil. It spattered on the grate, hissing as it touched the hot metal. Jill let it burn.

“This is the second time you’ve said that and I’m beginning to think you might really believe it.” Jill drew a steady breath, though it took effort. “So now I’ll ask you directly: do you think my photography is just a hobby?”

He ignored her, focusing instead on sending a text from his phone.

“Marc, I asked you a question.” Jill planted her hand on her hip, her South Jersey temper flaring. “I would appreciate an answer.”

“Just a minute,” he snapped, his face flushed as he typed.

She watched him receive and send not one but a flurry of texts, his expression appearing more desperate after each one. Clearly whoever he was texting wasn’t cooperating and Jill felt her anger soften just a little. He looked so utterly exhausted. Of course he hadn’t meant what he said…

When he was finished with his texts, Marc lifted his gaze and blinked, as if he’d forgotten Jill was in the room. It took him a moment to pick up the thread of their conversation, but when he did, his expression cleared.

“No, of course I didn’t mean that.” He reached for her and Jill felt her anger melt. But then he added. “You know I don’t care that much about your pictures.”

That was worse.

Jill shook him off and turned her attention back to the skillet, though the sauce had long since finished cooking. “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a hot shower?” His comment hurt and she wasn’t ready to let it go so easily, no matter how exhausted he might be. But neither was she ready to fight. Her day was too good to be ruined.

“Fine.” As he left the kitchen, he unlocked his phone.

She used to forgive casually hurtful remarks like this one. But this felt different, purposeful and targeted. As Jill added pasta to the salted water, she wondered what had changed.

A few minutes after Marc left the room, Jill’s cell phone vibrated with an incoming message. Ellie had promised to send pictures of the Brockhurst compound in East Hampton and Jill looked forward to seeing them. As she rinsed her hands, her cell phone vibrated again. And a third time as she dried them on the towel. She retrieved her phone and swiped at the screen to open her mailbox. But the messages were not from Ellie. They were from Brittney. Three new emails, each with attachments and blank subject headings. Jill tapped the icon to open the attachments and as she flipped through the pictures, she felt the floor dissolve beneath her.

The attachments were selfies.

Pictures taken by Brittney.

Photographs of Brittney and Marc together… in bed.

Jill sank into a chair as her breath left her body. She flipped through the images again and felt her world crumble. This had to be a mistake.

She forced herself to look at the pictures, to zoom in on the details. One looked as if it had been taken on a cot in a construction trailer—had to be the Berkshires. Two others, graphic images of Marc and Brittney together in the master bedroom at the Dewberry Beach house. Another on the couch in the pool house, just fifty yards from where Jill now stood. The last one taken in the bedroom Jill shared with her husband on the night of his birthday party.

So many of them.

It occurred to her, in an odd, detached way, that this explained Marc’s afternoon showers and the reason she had smelled his cologne just now.

The phone burned in her hand and she flicked it away. It skittered across the table and crashed to the floor.

After that, time melted into memory. Fragments of memories that didn’t quite make sense on their own suddenly arranged themselves in a surreal game of Tetris and the picture became whole. That August in Dewberry Beach when Marc’s hand had grazed Brittney’s shoulder as he’d passed her in the kitchen. Marc’s unwavering