“I thought I’d be good at this,” he says. I spare him a glance before I keep flicking.

“Good at what?”

“Loving more than one woman.”

The laugh that bursts from between my lips is sharp and ugly.

Seth looks at me, chagrined, and I feel a stab of guilt.

“Who can be good at something like that?” I ask, shaking my head. “God, Seth. Marriage to one person is hard enough. You’re right about one thing,” I say, setting the remote down and turning my full attention on him. “I’m disappointed. I feel betrayed. I’m...jealous. Someone else is having your baby and it’s not me.”

The most I’ve said about our situation. I immediately want to reel the words back in, swallow them down. I sound so jaded. It’s not a side of myself I’ve ever let Seth see. Men prefer the purrings of a confident, secure woman—that’s what the books say. That’s what Seth said about me in the first months of our dating: “I like that you’re not threatened by anything. You’re you no matter who else is in the room...” It isn’t that way now, is it? Two other women are in the room, and I notice them every minute of every day. I look around my small living room, my eyes touching the knickknacks and art that Seth and I chose together: a painting of an English seaside, a driftwood bowl that we found in Port Townsend in our first year of marriage, a pile of coffee table books that I swore I needed but have never paged through. All the things that comprise our lives, and yet none are filled with memories, or represent a joining of lives, like a baby would. He shares that bond with someone else. I suddenly feel depressed. Our existence together is a shallow one. If not for children, what is there? Sex? Companionship? Is anything more important than bringing life into the world? I reach up absently to lay a hand on my womb. Forever empty.

   EIGHT

It has been a miraculous three sunny days in Washington and the night sky is rejoicing with a spray of stars. I opened the blinds right before bed so we could feel like we were lying underneath them, but now they almost seem too bright as I lie awake next to my snoring husband. I glance at the clock and see it’s just past midnight when suddenly the screen on Seth’s phone lights up. His phone is on his nightstand and I lift myself slightly so I can see who is texting my husband. Regina. I blink at the name. Was that...Tuesday? A client wouldn’t text this late at night, and I know the names of everyone in his office. It had to be. I lie back down and stare at the ceiling saying the name over and over in my head: Regina... Regina... Regina...

Seth’s first wife is Tuesday. I don’t know if it was me or if it was Seth who gave her that nickname, but before Hannah, it was just Seth and the two of us. Three days went to Tuesday, three days to me, and one day was reserved for his travel. Things felt safer back then; I had more control over my own heart and his. I was the new wife, shiny and well-loved—my pussy a novelty rather than a familiar friend. Of course, there was the promise of babies and family, and I would be the one to provide them—not her. That boosted my position, gave me a power.

Tuesday and Seth met sophomore year in college at a Christmas mixer thrown by one of his prelaw professors. Before Seth was business, he was law. When Seth walked in, Tuesday, a second-year law student, was standing by the window sipping her Diet Coke alone and illuminated by Christmas lights. He spotted her right away, though he didn’t get to speak to her until the very end of the night. According to Seth’s account, she was wearing a red skirt and four-inch black heels. A departure from the dowdy attire of the rest of the law students. He doesn’t remember anything about her top, though I doubt it was anything scandalous. Tuesday’s parents were faculty members of the college, observing Mormons. She dressed modestly except for her shoes. Seth said she wore fuck-me shoes right from the get-go, and that over the years, her taste in footwear has intensified. I try to picture her: mousy brown hair, a blouse buttoned to her collarbone and hooker shoes. I asked once what brand she prefers, but Seth didn’t know. She has a whole closet filled with them. “But check if their soles are red,” I wanted to say.

Toward the end of the night, as people were starting to leave to head back to the dorms, Seth made his way over.

“Those are the sexiest shoes I’ve ever seen.”

That was his pickup line. Then he said, “I’d ask them on a date, but I think they’ll just reject me.”

To which Tuesday had replied, “You should ask me on a date instead, then.”

They were married two months after they graduated. Seth claimed that they never fought once during the two and a half years they dated. He said it with pride, though I felt my eyebrows lift at the ridiculousness. Fighting was the sandpaper that smoothed out the first years of a relationship. Sure, there was still plenty of lifelong grit after that, but the fighting stripped everything down, let the other person know what was important to you. They made the move to Seattle when a friend’s father offered Seth a job, but Tuesday hadn’t acclimated well to the constant shade and rainy mist of Seattle. First, she became miserable, then outright hostile as she accused him of dragging her away from her family and friends to mold away in wet, dreary Seattle. Then, a year into their marriage, he caught her with birth control pills, and she confessed that she didn’t want to have children. Seth was distraught. He spent the next year trying to convince her otherwise, but Tuesday was a career woman and my dear Seth was a family man.

She was accepted to a law school in Oregon, her dream. Their compromise was a relationship commute for the two years it would take her to finish. Then they would reevaluate and Seth would look for a new job somewhere closer to her. But the business Seth ran was doing well, and his investment in its success grew. When the owner had a stroke, he agreed to sell the company to Seth, whom he had trusted to run it for two years. Seth’s move to Oregon was thwarted. He would never leave Tuesday, he loved her too deeply, and so they worked around their respective states, driving, driving, driving. Sometimes Tuesday would drive to Seattle, but mostly it was Seth who made the sacrifices. I resented Tuesday for that, the first, selfish wife. Seth opened an office in Portland partially to be closer to Tuesday, and partially because it was a good business opportunity. When we first met, I asked him why he didn’t divorce her and move on. He’d looked at me almost pityingly, and asked if I’d been left before. I had, of course—what woman hasn’t experienced being left? A parent, a lover, a friend. Perhaps he was trying to distract me from the question, and it had worked. Tears sprang up, resentful memories came, and I believed Seth my savior. He wouldn’t leave me, no matter what. That’s where jealousy came in, when someone or something threatened my happiness. I’d understood Seth in that moment, admired him, even. He didn’t leave, but the downside of that was he didn’t leave anyone. He merely adapted. Rather than divorce, he took a new wife—one who could give him children. I was the second wife. Tuesday, in a compromise to remain without children, agreed to legally divorce Seth while I married him. I was to be the mother of his children. Until...Hannah.