There’s a running joke among the women who lunch on the Upper East Side. “When you get married,” it goes, “you can be anyone you want. Just don’t be Audrey Hayes. Her husband’s mistress is practically sleeping in their bed, and she just swallows it down for the sake of her son. The woman’s a walking tragedy.” The men, however, always say it with a note of envy. “A dutiful wife at home and a hot little thing on the side? That’s not a tragedy, that’s the dream.” But here’s the secret no one knew. Audrey Hayes, the most docile and accommodating wife in all of Manhattan, was about to give up custody of her son, just to get a divorce from her husband. Not that my husband, Grayson Hayes, would ever believe it. … I watched him across the vast expanse of our dining table, spooning soup into his mouth. The word divorce slipped out of me before I could stop it. The sound of it shocked me, but what followed was a wave of relief so profound it felt like taking my first breath after nearly drowning. Grayson’s hand paused mid-air. He placed the spoon down with a soft clink and delicately dabbed his lips with a linen napkin. “The soup’s a little salty tonight. Tell the chef to use less sodium tomorrow.” His phone, lying face-up on the polished mahogany, lit up. The hard lines of his face, the ones that were always set in a look of mild indifference whenever he looked at me, softened instantly. A small smile touched his lips as he tapped out a reply. The name on the screen was Isabelle. The world knew her as the mistress who had all but shoved me out of my own life. I took a steadying breath and hardened my tone. “Grayson. I want a divorce. Right now.” He didn’t even look up, just glanced at the Patek Philippe on his wrist. “Noah will be home in five minutes. Are you really going to make a scene?” There it was. He was playing his trump card, using the son I had nearly died to bring into this world as a shield. He was warning me to behave. But he didn’t know. He didn’t know that yesterday, I had decided to give up on every last one of them. It happened yesterday. My son, Noah, got into a fight with some townies over his girlfriend and ended up at the local precinct. When I got the call and rushed over, still in my apron, his little girlfriend looked me up and down and piped up. “Noah, is that your housekeeper?” The group of teenagers around them burst into laughter. Noah, chewing his gum with a pained expression, shot me a venomous look. “So embarrassing,” he muttered. I froze, my hands instinctively tugging at the apron I hadn’t had time to change. A hot flash of anger surged through me. “Noah, have I not told you about getting into relationships so young?” “Hey!” Noah snapped, cutting me off. It had been years since he’d called me ‘Mom.’ “Why don’t you try holding on to your own husband before you start lecturing me about my life? Can’t manage him, so you take it out on your son to feel important?” The blood drained from my face, a chill spreading from my scalp to the soles of my feet. I blinked, and tears I hadn’t known were there began to stream down my cheeks, hot and unstoppable. “Hehe, look, she’s crying,” the little girlfriend giggled, poking Noah in the chest. “Go easy on her, Noah. I guess yelling at her kid is the only way a housewife can maintain her so-called status, hahaha.” “What’s the point of crying at me?” he said, his voice laced with impatience. A cruel, sarcastic smile twisted his lips. “My dad is the one you should be crying to. Besides,” he added, his voice dropping with contempt, “you’re not exactly a young girl anymore. The whole damsel-in-distress routine doesn’t work. It’s just… pathetic.” Just like that, the tears stopped. The raw emotion was shattered by his words. I looked at my son’s face, a face that was an eighty-percent echo of Grayson’s, and saw it with terrifying clarity. They were father and son, through and through. They even looked at me with the same expression. The same dismissiveness. The same arrogance. A profound exhaustion settled deep in my bones. I turned to leave, but a figure smelling faintly of Chanel No. 5 brushed past me. I stopped. It was Isabelle. Her eyes were red-rimmed as she frantically checked Noah over from head to toe. “Noah, sweetie, are you hurt? You have to tell Aunt Isabelle, don’t be brave.” And Noah, who had been all swagger and defiance with the police officers just moments before, bowed his head like a tamed wolf cub. He awkwardly reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek. “Aunt Isabelle, don’t cry. I’m fine, really.” Looking at the two of them, anyone would have thought they were the real mother and son. “Audrey. Where do you think you’re going?” Grayson had arrived. His brow was furrowed, his eyes flashing with anger as he stared at me. “Noah is still in a police station, and you were just going to walk out? What kind of a mother are you?” Noah’s girlfriend shot a sly, triumphant smile and looped her arm through Isabelle’s. “Aunt Isabelle, you’re so good to Noah. I really wish you were his real mom.” Her gaze flickered over to me, dripping with insinuation. “I mean, some people don’t even care if their own son is hurt. They’re just looking for a chance to throw their weight around. It just breaks my heart for Noah.” Every eye in the room turned to me, their gazes filled with varying degrees of condemnation. I was the one who had been insulted, the one who should have been hurting. But I wasn’t even allowed to cry, because the son I had carried for ten months and brought into the world through a near-death ordeal would find my tears disgusting. Grayson let out a derisive snort. “Go home, Audrey. Isabelle and I have it covered here. We don’t need any outsiders.” 2 The silence in the dining room stretched, thick and heavy. At some point, our housekeeper had entered, placing a thick manila envelope on the table beside him. “Ma’am,” she said, her voice trembling slightly. “A lawyer asked me to give this to you.” Grayson impatiently flipped through the divorce agreement. My signature, clear and steady, was already on the final page. For the first time all evening, he finally looked at me, his brow furrowed in annoyance. “What new brand of insanity is this?” In the past, the slightest hint of a frown from him would send me into a spiral of anxious apologies, regardless of who was at fault. Marrying Grayson Hayes was the catch of a lifetime, the fulfillment of a girlhood dream where he was the moon I had spent my youth reaching for. But this time, I met his gaze without flinching. My voice was calm. “I’ll leave with nothing.” His fingers, clutching the papers, turned white at the knuckles. “Audrey…” Just then, a figure burst through the door. It was Isabelle, who laughed and promptly settled herself onto Grayson’s lap, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Gray, honey, Noah’s parent-teacher conference is today! We’re going to be late.” In our circle, there was an unspoken rule: no matter how much you fooled around, you never brought it home. Grayson had always been discreet with his other flings, keeping them hidden away. But Isabelle… Isabelle was different. Short of the legal title I still held, Grayson had given her everything. Sensing my stare, Isabelle made a show of scrambling to her feet. “Oh, Audrey, I’m so sorry. Am I interrupting something?” Grayson pulled her back onto his lap, his smile indulgent. “Just a little trouble. It’ll be sorted out in a minute. We won’t be late.” Isabelle let out a sigh of relief. “It’s just that this conference is really important. I guess I got a little anxious.” Watching them together, a bitter smile touched my lips. So that’s what I was. Anything to do with me was “trouble.” I, myself, was trouble. He rubbed his temples, a sign of his growing impatience. For the first time in our marriage, the great Grayson Hayes lowered his head to me, but only because he didn’t want to keep Isabelle waiting. “I admit I was a little harsh yesterday. It won’t happen again. And Noah… I’ll talk to him. I’ll remind him to respect you. Okay?” Isabelle bit her lip, her eyes pleading with me. “Audrey, Noah is what’s most important. Can you really stand to see him get reprimanded by his teacher for being late?” She leaned forward, her voice a conspiratorial whisper. “Please. For Noah’s sake. Can’t you just show a little more concern for him?” A lump formed in my throat, hot and suffocating. I wanted to scream at them. How could it be that I, Noah’s biological mother, had no idea he even had a parent-teacher conference? But what was the point? The last time I’d tried to pick him up from his private school, he had spotted me from a block away and deliberately turned to walk in the other direction, a look of disgust on his face. “Can you please not come to my school and embarrass me?” he’d hissed at me later that night. “You smell like kitchen grease. You look like a frumpy housewife.” “Someone asked me if I was the housekeeper’s son yesterday.” I closed my eyes, pushing down the familiar surge of acid heartbreak. I opened them and spoke, enunciating each word with chilling precision. “Sign the papers. Then you’ll have no one to hold you back.” “Are you sure you want a divorce?” 3 Grayson’s jaw was set in a hard line. I knew he was furious, but for the first time, I didn’t shrink. I didn’t abandon my own needs to soothe his temper. Isabelle’s eyes darted to the divorce agreement on the table, my name signed at the bottom. In a flash, her eyes filled with tears and she crumpled to the floor, sobbing. “I’m so sorry,” she wailed. “It’s all my fault. You want to divorce Gray because of me.” “I feel so awful. But I love him so much, and I love Noah so much. Please don’t be angry. I’ll never show my face again, I promise. Just… just let me be his pet. Something he can visit once in a while. That’s all I ask.” “It has nothing to do with you,” Grayson said, his voice a low growl as he tried to pull her up. But Isabelle threw off his hand and crawled on her knees toward me, clutching at my legs. “I’ll kneel for you. I’ll beg for your forgiveness.” “Just please, don’t do this out of spite. If you and Gray really get a divorce… what will happen to Noah?” I was pinned, unable to move. And in that space where no one else could see, Isabelle’s lips twisted into a triumphant, mocking smirk. The Hayes family never wanted you, she mouthed silently. Get out. Her words didn’t even register. The whole display was so absurd it was almost funny. I reached down to push her away, but she used my momentum, collapsing dramatically onto the floor and scraping her wrist against the leg of a chair. It immediately turned a raw, angry red. Before I could even process what had happened, a powerful force shoved me from behind. I stumbled, my feet tangling, and fell hard. My forehead struck the sharp corner of the dining table. A thick, warm liquid streamed down over my eyebrow, blurring my vision in a wash of crimson. “Are you crazy? Taking it out on Aunt Isabelle just because you’re upset!” “Audrey, have you had enough?!” Through the red haze, I saw the undisguised loathing in the eyes of my son and my husband. And finally, I laughed. It was such a clumsy, pathetic performance, but because it was Isabelle, they believed every second of it. Noah was already on his knees beside her, cradling her reddened wrist, his own eyes welling with tears. He produced an antiseptic wipe and a bandage from a nearby first-aid kit, applying them with the same gentle technique I had taught him years ago. “Don’t be scared, Aunt Isabelle,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “As long as I’m here, that crazy woman won’t ever hurt you again.” I could still remember twelve years ago, Noah in his incubator, his tiny eyes looking out at me with complete and total dependence. The delivery had been brutal. I had hemorrhaged, and Noah was born severely deprived of oxygen. He spent a full month in the NICU. No one thought he would make it. Grayson’s mother had already made arrangements at a funeral home. There was a fifty percent chance he would have severe developmental disabilities. “I can accept the Hayes family having no heir,” she had told me, her voice like ice. “But I will not accept an heir who is a vegetable.” Only I hadn’t given up. I begged, I groveled, I wore my knees raw pleading with Grayson’s family until his grandmother finally agreed to keep paying for his care. I spent every waking moment outside the NICU, separated by two layers of glass, talking to him, singing to him, doing anything I could to stimulate his tiny brain. I prayed to every god I could think of, offering up thirty years of my own life in exchange for his. Just let him be safe and sound. Year after year, safe and sound. So when Noah opened his eyes for the first time, I knew I would give up anything for him. I gave up a promotion at the gallery, trading my career for a kitchen, meticulously planning his every meal. I gave up my own feelings, enduring Grayson’s nights away from home, his constant neglect, his subtle devaluations. The divorce papers were scattered across the floor. Noah saw them, and his hands, still tending to Isabelle, froze. His voice rose to a shrill cry. “So that’s it. You blame Aunt Isabelle for the divorce, so you attack her. How can you be such a vicious woman?” “I will never leave with you! Someone like you doesn’t deserve to be my mother, and you don’t deserve to be Dad’s wife!” His words were like daggers. And all I could think of was the first time he spoke. The words he had said. “Love… Mommy… the most.” I remembered when the first rumors of Grayson’s affairs had surfaced. Noah, just a little boy then, would stand guard at the front door with his little face set in a serious frown. “You have to apologize to Mommy before I let you in.” 4 For so long, he had been my reason for living, the pillar that held up my world. But I didn’t need him to hold me up anymore. Grayson’s brow was furrowed, his voice a low threat. “If you divorce me, you will never see Noah again.” Father and son, their spines bristling in unison against me. I looked straight at Noah, my voice quiet but firm. “I’ll leave with nothing. And of course, I don’t want you.” The anger on Noah’s face popped like a balloon, replaced by a flash of panic and confusion. Grayson let out a cold laugh. He snatched a pen, scribbled his name on the final page with such force that he nearly tore the paper, and threw the entire document at me. “Don’t you come to regret this.” I bent down and picked up the scattered pages, one by one. With each sheet, it felt as though I were removing a link from a heavy chain I had been dragging for more than a decade. The relief was overwhelming. “Regret? Never.” I stood up, and for the first time in this house, my spine felt straight and strong. My family was never prominent in the city’s social hierarchy. At every gala and benefit, I was the wallflower, watching from a distance as Grayson held court, a sun surrounded by fawning planets. Our marriage was the result of a stupid bet he’d lost with his friends. He’d turned to me, a dare in his eyes, and asked if I would marry him. I’d said yes. He took me to City Hall that very night. There was no ring, no ceremony. It wasn’t until I gave birth to Noah that the world even knew a Mrs. Hayes existed. I turned to leave, but a glint of moisture in the corner of Noah’s eye caught my attention. I sighed. “The weather’s getting colder. Remember to wear a jacket. Your immune system is weak; it takes you longer than others to get over a cold.” Every time the seasons changed, Noah would get sick. When he was little, he couldn’t sleep with a fever unless I was sitting by his bed. I often stayed up with him for four or five nights in a row. “And stay away from shellfish. It’s too harsh on your system. It gives you stomach cramps.” Noah couldn’t touch any kind of seafood. The first time Grayson, in a rare moment of paternal indulgence, had let him have whatever he wanted, Noah had gorged himself on lobster behind my back. The resulting illness led to the entire family blaming me for my carelessness. I had nearly cried my eyes out from guilt and exhaustion. “In the fridge…” “That’s enough,” Noah cut me off, the panic in his eyes gone, replaced by a contemptuous smirk. “You just said you didn’t want me. Who are you putting on this touching motherly performance for now? Just get out of here. You don’t belong in this house anymore.” I swallowed the rest of my words. I went upstairs to pack. The sound of a car engine starting up echoed from the driveway below. My hands didn’t pause. But as I looked around, I realized the only things that were truly mine were a simple summer dress I’d worn the day Grayson and I went to City Hall, and the clothes on my back. With a sense of futility, I stopped. I twisted the diamond ring from my finger, placed it on the dresser, and walked out of the room empty-handed. I was stopped at the front door. Grayson had come back. He pulled me into his car, and we drove in silence until we reached the bridge over the river. Noah glared at me from the back seat. “This is all your fault! If you hadn’t said those things, Aunt Isabelle wouldn’t have been so wracked with guilt that she jumped into the river! She was trying to convince Dad to make up with you!” Isabelle was huddled in Grayson’s arms, soaking wet and shivering violently. “Audrey, you can hit me, you can scream at me, whatever you want,” she sobbed. “But please, don’t let this family fall apart because of me.” Grayson was beside himself with worry. He grabbed me, his fingers digging into my neck, and forced me against the cold metal railing of the bridge. “Apologize!” he snarled, his face inches from mine. “Apologize, or I’ll throw you in there so you can feel a fraction of the misery she just went through.” I clenched my jaw. “Never.” Isabelle’s sobs grew louder. Noah balled his fists. “Bitch! Dad, just do it! Throw her in!” The pressure on my neck tightened. Grayson’s eyes were squeezed shut. With a final roar of fury, he shoved me away. But the force of it sent me stumbling backward, over the low railing. The icy water of the river shocked the air from my lungs. The last thing I saw was the image of the three of them on the bridge, huddled together in a protective embrace. I stopped struggling. My fingers found a small button on the side of my watch and pressed it. I let myself sink. If they wanted me dead, then I would grant their wish.
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