On my drive back to the white office building I see a bar, the Open sign flashing sporadically in the window. I check the time: three more hours. It’s too early to drink, but I pull into the parking lot, anyway. There are only two other cars here. One of them probably belongs to the bartender, the other to the town drunk. I eye the older-model Mercedes as I head for the door, my shoes crunching on the gravel. I can already taste the liquor on the back of my throat. How long has it been since I had a drink?

When I push open the door, the smell of a dive bar greets me: a medley of stale air, spilled beer and body odor. I breathe in the smell as I slide onto a bar stool and order a vodka soda from a guy with tired eyes and a Van Halen T-shirt. I’m thankful he doesn’t speak to me, just slides the drink across the counter without making eye contact and moves on to something else. This would be the time I’d pull out my phone, scroll through the updates my friends were posting on Facebook, maybe check the sales on my favorite shopping websites. I stare at my drink instead, the true body language of someone who’s sitting in a bar before lunchtime, and plan what I’m going to say to Regina.

   TWENTY-SEVEN

I’m buzzed. Three vodka sodas and I’ve had nothing to eat all morning. My vision teeter-totters and my limbs feel loose and undisciplined. I chide myself as I comb my fingers through my hair in the tiny bar bathroom, grimacing at my reflection. I look like a drunk: swollen face, red eyes and splotchy skin. At least I’d lost the orange sweater. I splash water on my face in the little sink before I head out.

I have exactly thirty minutes to pull myself together before I see my husband’s first wife. What she thinks of me matters, which is why drinking was a bad idea. I am—was—technically her replacement. Despite the fluorescent green jealousy I feel toward her, I also feel a kinship. I want her to like me. She could help me. I’m like an eager puppy, abused and still wagging its tail for love. I stop at a gas station and buy eyedrops, gum and body spray. At the last minute I ask the guy behind the counter for one of the burner phones. The body spray is probably a bad idea—it’s vanilla scented—but the bar was warm and I feel the dampness under my arms and on my lower back. I smell like a sweet, sweaty cupcake. I’m five minutes late when I run into the office. The secretary gives me an annoyed look when she sees me. The least you can do, lady...

“This way,” she says, standing. I follow her down a hall of doors. It’s all wrong, the way they’ve set it up. I’m reminded of high school, the long walk to the principal’s office. I can smell vanilla and sweat coming off me in a mist.

Regina is seated behind her desk when the secretary knocks lightly and opens the door. She steps back without meeting my eyes and allows me to walk past her. Regina stands as soon as she sees me. She’s tiny, as Seth said, but much prettier than in her photos. I’m staring; I realize this when it’s only the two of us in the room, the secretary having taken her leave. This is surreal. She motions for me to sit in one of the two leather chairs that face her desk. Instead of reseating herself, she walks around the desk and sits in the empty chair next to me, crossing her legs. I smell her perfume right away, the sleepy scent of lavender. I wither in my chair, as if by doing so I could pull back the vanilla/sweat smell.

“Can I offer you water or coffee?” she asks. “Perhaps tea?”

“I’m fine, thank you.” I push my hair behind my ears and straighten up in my chair. The principal mustn’t know I’m afraid.

“I understand you’re considering divorce.” The cadence of her voice is mesmerizing—deep, yet feminine, like one of those old movie stars in black-and-white films. Puuurrrr.

“Not just considering,” I say. “And by the way, thank you for giving up lunch to see me. I realize that I missed my appointment. It was very kind of you.” My mother always said that confident people didn’t overthank or overthink.

“It’s business,” Regina says. “Work now, food later, right?” She smiles. “So tell me about your situation.”

I clear my throat. In the cuff on my sleeve I can feel the price tag I forgot to pull off. I thumb the cardboard, pushing it farther up my sleeve.

“My husband is a polygamist.” It’s a statement meant to jar an average person. I’d often thought about blurting it out at other times to strangers or my colleagues just to see the look on their faces.

Regina’s face, however, remains the same. It’s almost as if she hasn’t heard me. She doesn’t ask me to clarify or expound and it’s not until she says, “Carry on,” that I do.

“I am his legal wife. He has two others.”

She stares at me, hard. “Are there children involved?”

I pause, thinking of Hannah, how she’d looked at me like she’d never seen me before when I rang her doorbell last night. The confusion and hurt in Seth’s eyes when I told the doctor what he was. I feel a niggling doubt creep into my mind. You are crazy, you are crazy, you are crazy.

“His third wife is pregnant, not very far along.”

“And these other wives, do they all share a home with your...husband?”

I shake my head. “Two live here, in Portland. I live in Seattle.”

I search her face for any sign of recognition. Did she know as little about me as I had known about her?

“Do they know about you?” she asks.

I look long and hard at her face, the full lips lined and colored in cherry, the splattering of freckles across her nose showing through her makeup. It’s now or never, this is what I came for.

“Do you know, Regina? How much has he told you about me?”

Her expression never changes. She crosses her legs as she leans back in her chair, blank eyes drilling into mine. For the longest time we stay just like that, her watching me and me watching her. It feels like I’m about to fall off the edge of a precipice.

“Thursday,” she says.

And I want to leap from the chair and scream, that one word validating everything I am here for. Regina knows my name, she knows who I am. Self-doubt is slime and glue, but Regina saying my name has washed me clean.

“Yes,” I say, breathless...pathetic.

Her face is arranged in undisguised disgust. She sighs, uncrosses her legs and leans forward, forearms on thighs. She doesn’t look so put together now, just tired. It’s amazing what a facial expression can do to change someone’s look.

“Seth contacted me. He said you might come by.” She stares at the ground between her heels before straightening up.

So Seth already knows where I am. He knows me better than I realized. There is a sinking feeling in my stomach as I stare at her. While I’ve been imagining him scrambling to call my mother and Anna, he went straight to Regina. I blink hard, trying to disguise the shock that must be on my face. I thought I had been smart, but apparently my husband is smarter. Silly me. But that is the theme of my life for these last years: silly me. Seth had anticipated this, my breakaway from his plan. He’d thought about all of this, predicted my actions. Perhaps only in the last weeks, but maybe always.