The Wives A Domestic Thriller

He comes over on Thursday every week. That's my day; I'm Thursday. I make everything beautiful for him - the candles flickering, the rack of lamb cooling on the table, my body pliant and ready. When you share your husband, you learn that your value is measured in the pleasure you provide. I am his legal wife, but there is also Monday, and Tuesday. I don't know their names, and I'm not supposed to ask. The key to making this work is not thinking of them. But in the quiet moments after he's gone, their phantom presence fills my condo, a constant, curdling mix of curiosity and spite. I tell myself I am happy. I tell myself this life is enough.

One day, while doing his laundry, I find a slip of paper in his pocket. It's a doctor's bill for a woman named Hannah. I know, with a certainty that chills me, that she is one of them. The rules blur and then break entirely. I find her. She lives in a cream-colored Victorian house in Portland, a storybook home with a garden full of evergreens instead of flowers. When she finds me admiring it from the street, she is kind, inviting me inside for a tour. She is more beautiful than I imagined, with Nordic cheekbones and an easy laugh. She tells me she's pregnant. She has no idea who I am, and as I follow her through the gleaming rooms of the house he remodeled for her, a bitter jealousy takes root in my heart.

The jealousy turns to fear when I see the bruises on her arm, a dark cluster of purple marks that look unsettlingly like fingers. When we meet for coffee later, she confides in me, a perfect stranger. She tells me Seth has a temper, that he hid her birth control pills to trap her with a pregnancy. The man she describes is not the man I know, not the one who holds me with such tenderness. My own relationship with Seth grows strained. We argue, and in a flash of anger, he shoves me. I hit my ear on the nightstand, the shock of it as sharp as the pain. He leaves, and I am left alone with a new, terrifying question: who is the man I married?

My obsession deepens. If I can understand his other wives, perhaps I can understand him. I turn my attention to Tuesday, the first wife, the one he's most hesitant to speak of. I find her name - Regina Coele - and discover she's on a dating website, claiming to be divorced. Posing as a man named Will, I begin messaging her. She's flirtatious and lonely, complaining that her ex-husband moved on too quickly. She's lying, of course, but her lies only create more questions. In one of her photos, I see the faint profile of a blond woman standing beside her, a woman who looks exactly like Hannah.

Then comes a panicked, broken voice mail from Hannah. “We had a fight,” she whispers through the static. “I don't feel safe.” I try to call her back, but she doesn't answer. I race to my condo to confront Seth, my mind reeling with images of his violence. He is already there, waiting for me, his knuckles bandaged. He denies everything, his eyes cold. He tells me I'm sick, that the other wives are a delusion I created. “You're having delusions again,” he says, and in the ensuing struggle, as my feet slip on the wet kitchen floor, the world goes dark.

I wake up in a hospital, the hum of fluorescent lights overhead. They tell me I have a concussion. Seth is there, his face a mask of concern, telling the doctors it was all a game, a fantasy I took too far. My mother comes and pleads with me to accept help. Everyone tells me the same story: I am sick, broken by the trauma of a miscarriage a year ago. The other wives, they insist, are not real. My mind has created them. They tell me the beautiful house in Portland is not Hannah's; it's mine, a property my grandmother left me. I am a prisoner in a psych ward, force-fed pills that cloud my thoughts, and for a time, I almost believe them.

I escape. I have to find Hannah, to prove I'm not crazy. But when I arrive at her door, she looks at me with vacant eyes. “I don't know you,” she says, before shutting the door in my face. Desperate, I go to Regina. In her shabby apartment, surrounded by things too large for the space, the truth finally comes out, but it's not the one I expect. “Thursday,” she says, her voice laced with pity, “you had an affair with Seth. You're the reason we got divorced.” She tells me my mind has twisted everything. I was never his wife; I was his mistress.

The final confrontation is a blur of shouts and accusations in a new condo I've never seen. Seth and a pregnant Hannah are there. Regina arrives, pretending to be my savior, but she has called the police, framing me as an unhinged stalker. “You were obsessed with my ex-wife, just like you're obsessed with Hannah,” Seth spits, his words like acid. “That's all you were to me.” In that moment, I remember everything - the affair, the pregnancy, being left for Hannah, and begging him to take me back as his mistress. The plural marriage was a story I told myself to survive the humiliation of being the woman he fucked, but never the one he chose. As he lunges for me, my fingers find the cold metal of the gun in my waistband. A loud pop echoes in the small room, and his blood pools, warm and real, on my stomach.

I am back in Queen County now. They say Seth will never walk again. They tell me I created an alternate reality to cope with my grief and shame. I sit in group therapy and nod, playing the part of the woman who is getting well. I know the truth they've constructed for me. I was the mistress, the other woman, the one who couldn't let go. But as I watch Regina walk into the visitor's room one afternoon, her face a mask of smug victory, I know there is one more truth to be told. I am responsible only for myself. And I am finally helping myself.