Chapter 4 - KELSEYKelsey Hart was thirty-six.
Blonde.
Sharp-featured.
Excellent at her job.
And sleeping with my husband.
She had worked with Ethan for four years at Maddox Residential Group, the small property-management company Ethan and I owned together.
We managed thirty-one rental homes and six small apartment buildings around the county.
Not an empire.
Profitable when everything worked.
Brutal when roofs leaked, tenants stopped paying, or furnaces failed during January.
I handled bookkeeping, leases, insurance, and compliance.
Ethan handled acquisitions, maintenance, and contractors.
Kelsey began as an office manager.
Then took on vendor coordination.
Then payroll.
Then everything Ethan claimed he no longer had time to explain to me.
The affair started eight months before the kitchen assault.
I discovered it seven weeks earlier.
A shared tablet synchronized messages Ethan thought were private.
Nothing creative.
Nothing ambiguous.
Miss you.
Last night was worth it.
Wish she would stop pretending the marriage is alive.
She.
Me.
I confronted him.
He admitted it.
Then said:
“We were already broken.”
I asked:
“Did you tell me?”
“You knew.”
No.
May you like
I knew we were struggling.
I did not know my husband had outsourced the decision to end our marriage to someone sleeping with him.
