I stood in front of the office building for almost an hour before he came out. Once, I had wronged him and ruined his life. Now, another had done likewise to me, in the same manner, and almost exactly twelve years apart. 

I don’t believe in karma, but a primitive part of my brain, the same one that made my ancestors ascribe noises in the dark to monsters and lightning among the clouds to gods, couldn’t help but link his fate with mine. The feeling wouldn’t leave me, even if I recognized the thinking behind it to be as spurious as that of the barely-men that huddled in caves after they left the trees.

Humans are pattern recognition machines. We excel at it. Sometimes, though—often, in fact–we find patterns where only random noise exists. In this case, I chose to give into the irrationality of a false pattern and obey its dictates, if only to silence its nagging voice.

An apology was long past due anyway; that’s the lampshade I hung on my superstition as I anxiously awaited my long-delayed second showdown with Lance Jenkins. I would apologize, knowing how little that meant. I thought I had known before, but I had been too young and inexperienced to really understand. 

“Time makes fools of us all,” they say. Looking back, I felt like the biggest fool of all.

—

The first day in my first house, the wives of the King’s Forest subdivision watched me unload my meager possessions from a U-Haul van—not even a full truck—into a space far too large for my needs. No one approached me that day. I presented too enigmatic an oddity for them to simply approach with open arms. 

Obviously, I was too young to be a homeowner, especially in that neighborhood. Was I the son of the actual owners, home from college? But if that was the case, why weren’t they there? Maybe I was watching the house until they could take possession, but then why the U-Haul? I didn’t know it at the time, but those were the questions swirling about the neighborhood moms’ private message group.

They sent a scout the next day, the youngest of their number, who lived a few doors down from my home. After all, if one needed answers from a young man, a little sex appeal couldn’t hurt.

Upon my doorstep, that second day stood a gorgeous blonde MILF, if only by the technical definition of “MILF.” While she looked far too young to have given birth, she was, in fact, a mother of two children—Hunter and Zoe, four and two years old, respectively—and I most assuredly would have liked to fuck her, even before she opened her mouth and introduced herself with the smokiest, sexiest voice I thought I’d ever hear. 

“Hey, neighbor. I thought I should come by and introduce myself.” She extended one perfectly manicured hand; I didn’t know whether to shake it, kiss it, or kneel in supplication. “Ellanora Jenkins.”

A handshake seemed safest. “I, uh, I, Doug. Doug Richards. Nice to meet you.” She smiled, at first invitingly, but then increasingly bemused as I held her hand far longer than necessary. Finally picking up on her none-too-subtle cues, I let go and stammered, “Would, ah, would you like to come in? I’m afraid I don’t have anything but water and Coke, but–“

The million-watt smile returned. “I’d be delighted, Doug.” 

She stepped across the threshold, presenting me with an opportunity to stare without too much guilt. Ellanora–Ella to her friends–had chosen to welcome me to the neighborhood dressed in the at-the-time new uniform of the Greater North American Married Sexbomb: yoga pants stretched to their limit, loose cropped t-shirt with the strap of a sports bra peeking out, running shoes that cost more than my first car, and a rock capable of doubling as a signaling mirror on her left hand. The last disappointed me just a touch, but the rest of the view more than made up for it.

Besides, her clothing wasn’t really what I paid attention to, which, of course, was the point of said clothing. Ella was fucking stacked, with tits a man could drown in while motorboating and a bubble butt that made my mind subconsciously drift to thoughts of chewing gum. 

Hard muscle in her legs, especially her calves, only served to accentuate the soft, ample curves of her torso; any fat that remained on her body was there by her choice. As she walked, her shirt bounced and settled, showing tantalizing flashes of tanned skin faintly striped with stretch marks. I’d never thought that I had a fetish before, but then I’d only been with girls, never women. I first understood the difference at that moment, as I also understood how badly I wanted to be with one. 

Specifically, this one.

Ella glanced around at my living room, whose decor consisted of an old futon, a rickety table serving as an entertainment center, my dorm stereo and TV, and the freshly installed WiFi router. “Still getting settled in?”

“Sort of?” This was just about everything I owned, but I knew how much of a loser that made me look like. “I, ah, need to get some things out of storage and from my folks’ house.”

“Oh! So… you are the owner?” The surprised inflection on ‘are’ made me cringe inwardly. It shouldn’t have, because I recognized how much of an anomaly I represented, but the dismissive judgment of a beautiful woman can make a guy, especially one just barely out of college, feel about six inches tall.

Best to just be honest, I decided. “My uncle passed away recently, and he left me some money. Not, like, enough to live on forever, but…” I waved my hand around at the empty space. “After talking to some friends and family, buying a house in a nice neighborhood seemed like the best investment. I’m starting my own business, too, but—“

Her demeanor changed like a light switch had been flipped. “Oh! Oh, that’s very exciting! I mean—God, I must sound like such a bitch—I’m sorry about your uncle, but I’m sure he’d be proud of what you've chosen to do with your inheritance.

“You know, I’ll tell you what. You have just got to meet my husband, Lance. He’s an absolute genius when it comes to business management. I’m sure he can help you get yours rolling.”

“Wow! That would… yeah, that’d be fantastic. I’m not sure how much I can afford to pay, because I’m kind of living off what’s left of my inheritance. I mean, I’ve got contract work coming in, but…”

Ella shook her head and put a hand up, forestalling any further discussion. “Nonsense. You’re our neighbor, and we’ve been where you are, trying to start a business from scratch. He’ll get a kick out of it, I’m sure.”

With that settled, she and I chatted about her and her family for a little while longer. She and Lance met in college, and they’d been married seven years. The two of them had moved into the neighborhood three years before, their small apartment barely able to contain the two of them and their first child, much less the one that they had on the way when they left it. 

While I had bought at the trough in the market following the 2007 financial collapse, they had bought at its peak, and that put a lot of pressure on her husband. She had offered to go back to work using her degree in early childhood education, but Lance had successfully argued that the expenses and her salary would barely be a wash, so she stayed home and did the best imitation of a 1950s housewife she could. She did make a little money on the side as a personal trainer, though; it was easy to see how, given that she was a walking, talking, extremely effective advertisement for her side hustle.

When Ella talked about her husband, she lit up with an almost religious fervor. While she did flirt with me, she also made it very clear where her loyalties lay. I remember thinking at the time that I hoped some day to have a wife both as gorgeous and devoted as her.

Sadly, she eventually had to go. Happily, though, I got to watch her leave, her hips swaying the entire way from my doorstep to the main sidewalk. She knew I was watching. I mean, she had to know, right? No woman could exude raw sex like that without at least having an inkling.

And so, I made my first friend in the subdivision of King’s Forest. Sure, I kind of wished she hadn’t had that ring on, but if she hadn’t… well, let’s just say that hindsight is 20/20, and I can only see that now as a bullet dodged.

The third day brought the committee to my door. They might have called themselves the welcome wagon, but they were the movers and shakers of the subdivision set. Their husbands served on the HOA, and those with school-aged kids ran the PTA. If an association existed, they managed it; if it didn’t, they created it. Their scout had brought them intel about the stranger in their midst, and now they needed to evaluate it themself.

In retrospect, I realize now that’s what it was: an evaluation to determine whether I’d be a disruptive presence. I didn’t fit in their notion of who should own a home in King’s Forest; live there, perhaps, as the college-aged son of a homeowner, or–heaven forbid–even renting there, but owning a home? God, no. What kind of influence would I be? Think of the children!

They didn’t come across as snooty, though, instead seeming like a bunch of soccer moms, interspersed with a few grandmas who had too much time on their hands and too little ability to mind their own business. I marked them down as mostly harmless, even as I put my best foot forward, trying to be honest and open when asked questions. My mom had to deal with similar busybodies when we moved into a new house when I was a kid, and I knew I had no skeletons in my closet, so that seemed the best option. I know now how hopelessly naïve that tactic was, but at the time, it made sense. 

More importantly, it worked. It worked in spades. Ella might have given me a clean bill of health, but some of them, especially the older ones, had still come in half-expecting an uncouth, unkempt frat boy doing keg stands while playing thrash metal at ear-shattering levels. Sure, Ella had assured them I was harmless, but she wasn’t all that much older than me, with only an eight-year difference in our ages. Her ability to get information from me, a horny young man, could be counted on; the accuracy of that information, perhaps not so much. 

What they found, though, was a kind of boring, soft-spoken nerd. I still only had water and Coke to offer; the lack of alcohol reassured them. My furnishings were sparse, but I took care of them and the house, as I’d started to poke at some small repairs. Arguably, even more important, I was working when they rang the doorbell, not slacking off.

I passed their inquisition with flying colors. They loved me. One of the grandmas thought I was too good to be true, I later heard, comparing me to Eddie Haskell; I had to look that one up. The consensus, though, was that while I might not fit in, that didn’t mean I couldn’t fit in. They were just the women to make that happen, and their husbands were just the ones to help.

After that, I became their project.

It all happened a lot quicker than I could have expected. Mrs. Taylor came by first, tutting about the lack of furniture. “You’re going to want to have a girl over here sometime, and this just won’t do.” Luckily for me, she had a part-time gig as an interior decorator, and she knew exactly what I could do to spruce the place up. Mrs. Cartwright came next, suggesting perhaps a more professional wardrobe, one she’d be happy to help me pick out. 

Then visited Mrs. Baker, the former hairstylist, to tame my mane; Mrs. Alvarez, the retired home ec teacher, to add more dishes to my rotation than mac and cheese and Hot Pockets; and Mrs. Redmond, the dance instructor, who just <i>had</i> to come by after she saw me spasmodically convulsing by the window one day in blasphemous mockery of her profession.

Rounding out the crowd was Kathy Grayson, the grandmother whose suspicions I had aroused by being so boring. She was the last to arrive on my doorstep, but the first among equals when it came to the neighborhood women. Kathy and her husband, Bob, belonged to a different generation than most of my neighbors, Boomers among the Gen Xers. They acted as sort of tribal elders, smoothing over discord between members and offering advice on successfully navigating the depredations of middle age that their juniors had begun to grapple with.

Mrs. Grayson came last not because of any animosity, her early reticence about me notwithstanding; instead, she waited until I was ready to accept her teachings. She gave me what, for lack of a better term, I can only describe as finishing lessons. Knowing how to dress, dance, cook, and all the other skills taught to me by the assembled housewives of King’s Forest meant little if I fell flat on my face the moment I opened my mouth, after all. She instructed me in the techniques I needed to mingle, to flirt effectively, to charm, and to schmooze. My later successes, both personal and professional, had much to do with the time she spent with me.

Her husband, Bob, brought me into the fold of the husbands, warming to me almost as soon as we met. Unlike his wife, he was the first of the men to offer me more than a grunted “hey” as we passed on the sidewalk. Bob had both the size and bearing of a silverback gorilla, but the manners of a church deacon, understandable, since he used to be one. A deacon, that is, not a silverback gorilla.

He brought me around to a Friday poker game and that was that: the tribal elder told the others without words that I was one of them. After cleaning my clock at the game and accepting the tribute that my lightened wallet provided, they agreed. The next phase of my training began, having passed from boy to man in the eyes of the patriarchs of King’s Forest. 

Mr. Baker saw me struggling with a cheap, unpowered push mower one Saturday morning and donated an almost-new self-propelled version that he’d retired once he got his riding model. The other husbands, not to be outdone, managed to assemble nearly a whole slate of new-to-me power tools and lawn maintenance equipment between them. In the cases where they couldn’t address a gap in my collection, they argued loudly with each other until coming to a general agreement as to which model I should buy and what sales to wait for. Along with the equipment came all the know-how that they could share over the inadvisable pairing of a bottle of beer and a table saw. 

The husbands also showed me how respectable men whiled away their free time: golfing with Messrs. Grayson, Alvarez, and Baker; boating and fishing with Ron Cartwright and Bill Redmond; and irregular visits to the local sports bar with all of them. While I didn’t take to any of the hobbies in the way that I think they hoped I would, the hobbies weren’t the point; how to socialize was. They were, in their way, instructing me in the ways of grown-up male fraternization and how it differed from hanging out with my college friends. 

I’ll admit, I didn’t take to some of their methods for bonding. There was a fair bit of one-upmanship, but I’d expected that. God, though, their humor. Recycled jokes from "Married With Children" and "According to Jim" about how awful being married is, constant grousing about trivial shit like having to take out the garbage or sharing the remote, ‘joking’ about hiding how much they’d spent on their boats or their guns or their motorcycles from their wives. A little of that would have seemed like blowing off steam, but as much as some of them did it? I wondered occasionally if the most vocal husbands actually liked their wives or if they just stayed together because it was what they were ‘supposed’ to do. 

The parade of purchases and expensive hobbies required might all sound expensive, but it wasn’t a fleecing. Well, outside that first poker night. All of them, husbands and wives, charged me nothing for their services. Any required goods they either freely gave from their own stock or charged me the cost, at most. I never figured out how much of their efforts came from simple neighborliness, general kindness, boredom on their part, or–in the case of the husbands–nagging from their wives. 

I acted as a sort of surrogate son to many of them. They had kids my age, or close to it, but their kids didn’t listen to them the way I did. Hell, I didn’t listen to my parents the way I listened to the neighborhood couples, so I get that. I’d purchased a home in the town I went to college in specifically because I wanted to enter this phase of my life separate from them. As much as I loved my folks, they couldn’t have given me the advice my neighbors did–and I couldn’t have received it–precisely because they were my folks, and because they would see me as their son long before they could ever come close to seeing me as a man. 

The couples in my neighborhood, especially the men, saw me as a young man to be molded into a full-fledged adult, but not one whom they were responsible for. I could and did make my mistakes, but only after they’d tried their best. Any angst they might have felt was muted, and they could offer advice to me that a parent might find irresponsible to give to their children. 

I felt a particular kinship with Bob Grayson. Of all the men in the neighborhood, he reminded me most of my father, even if Bob was older by almost a decade. They shared the same faith, had similar jobs, occupied the position of elder in their churches, and had nearly indistinguishable outlooks on life: work hard, be steadfast in your faith, a man’s word is his bond, and so on. I might have differed in some of the specifics, but I agreed with the broad strokes. More than any of the other men, I went to him for advice when I had doubts about a particular course of action.

Hell, he even liked the same old Westerns my dad did, and some nights he would come over to my house, or I’d go to his, and we’d watch one of the classics, either the really old black-and-white ones or a spaghetti Western. Bob could have quoted most of them by heart, but he still liked watching them over and over again. 

I think, although he never said, that it was less about watching them and more about watching them with me. Kathy told me that he and his son used to sit together after they had dinner and watch one almost every night, but their boy had moved to Europe over a decade ago and had a family of his own. As much as he represented a pseudo-father figure to me, I stood in for the son he couldn’t spend time with anymore.

On the opposite end of the age spectrum, Lance and Ella were the two closest in age to me. Lance’s business kept him very busy, but he carved out enough time–free of charge, as Ella insisted–to get me pointed in the right direction. While he wasn’t exactly my friend, he was very kind and incredibly insightful. There are many things I regret about this time of my life, and not getting to know him better is one of them; perhaps I’d have done less harm if I had.

Ella, the fittest woman on the block, placed herself in charge of my exercise regimen. I have to admit, the couple of hours I spent with her each week were my favorite, even if I did feel more than a little guilty for perving on a married woman. She didn’t appear to mind, though; of all the flirtatious women in the neighborhood, she seemed like the only one who, if things were a little different, might follow up on it. 

They weren’t, though, and we didn’t. Even if I didn’t like Lance, which I did, married women were a hard and fast “no” for me. That’s what I believed, anyway. That moral certitude hadn’t ever been tested back then.

Beyond that, the more time I spent with her, the more I saw her as my friend, rather than as the hot young MILF down the road. She’d regularly pop by just to say "hi," or bring the kids over to play in my pool, and I had a great time getting to know her as a person, instead of just a fantasy.

I did notice something else, though, when interacting with the various neighbors. The other couples were my friends. They were Ella’s friends. However, they didn’t seem like they were Lance’s friends, not really. He was Ella’s husband, not their friend. While I doubted they’d make that distinction to his face–or even to hers–I regularly got that sense. Still, it didn’t bother me at the time. After all, he was a busy guy, and not terribly sociable. Hell, my mom and dad probably had similar relationships with their neighbors, so I put it out of my mind.

Regardless of my mentors’ various reasons, I do know that, in the first ten or so months of home ownership, I learned more real-world skills than I had in four years of college. My neighbors turned me from a shy geek who stammered his way through a conversation with a beautiful woman to a confident, well-groomed, and charming home and business owner. 

They took a chance on me professionally, too. Several chances, in fact; I designed or redesigned websites and later apps for the businesses owned by most of the men and a few of the women, giving them a greater internet presence. In gratitude, they referred me to their friends, who referred me to their friends. 

My sex life, the utmost concern for a man in his early twenties, shot through the roof. Single, young, homeowner, entrepreneur, and able to dance, cook, and hold conversations about topics besides twenty-something guy stuff? I was beating them off with a stick. 

The neighbors found the revolving door on the front of my house endlessly amusing. Mrs. Alvarez winked at me one morning as I walked the previous night’s date to her car, and Ella once laughed, “My, I didn’t know you slept with the windows open!” on another occasion. I didn’t “sleep” with the windows open again.

For what my neighbors taught me, for the shot in the arm they gave my love life and the leg up in business, I can’t thank them enough. I’ll always be grateful for the time and effort they invested in me there at the beginning. 

For everything that came later? Not so much.

My downfall amongst the tribe of King’s Forest began with a simple mistake on my part: I woke up on a Tuesday and thought it was a Wednesday. My software consulting business had started to take off, and I spent so much time burning the midnight oil on projects that the days often bled into one another. 

On that fateful Tuesday morning, I roused myself only a few minutes before noon, having slept through my alarm. My CrossFit appointments with Ella started at one in the afternoon on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I began the mad dash to be clean, lightly fed, and somewhat presentable before hurrying down the street to her and Lance’s house. 

I rang the bell, but no one answered. Listening closely, though, I heard muffled sounds of straining coming from inside. That didn’t surprise me too much, since Ella often warmed up before I arrived. Figuring she had her earbuds in, I made my way around to the backyard, planning to knock on the sliding glass door. Instead, I found it slightly ajar.

That’s not all I found.

“Yeah, bitch, fucking take it!” I heard his voice before I saw the two of them; he’d been quiet up until that crude exclamation. Ella was anything but quiet, though, whimpering and grunting and crying out nonsense words. I froze, unsure of what to do next, but then she made a noise that couldn’t be anything but pain, so I turned the corner, ready to help my friend.

She had about all the help she needed, though. Yeah, it had been a pained noise, but that was because the greaseball had grabbed her ponytail and was yanking on it as he railed her from behind, which she quite obviously and very vocally appreciated. 

He didn’t look like anything special. Just some guy. A little older than me, a little fitter, a little scruffier. The angle didn’t give me a view of his equipment, but I didn’t see anything particularly special about the way he fucked, either, or even in the effect he had on her. Ella was loud and clearly into it, but she didn’t seem any more so than the random dates I brought home on the weekends.

But my God, she was everything I’d fantasized about while guiltily rubbing one out to her. Absolutely incredible: perfect body glowing with light perspiration, teardrop tits slapping together as she received thrust after thrust from the douchebag, and that smoky voice begging and moaning as she came like a freight train. 

They hadn’t bothered to undress; instead, he’d pushed her shirt and sports bra up to maul one tit, and she’d lowered her yoga pants–no panties–just enough to give him access. The word that flashed through my mind as I watched them was “rutting.”

I stood there for what had to be a couple of minutes, a flood of conflicting emotions drowning out my ability to react. Disbelief at what I saw; lust for Ella; anger on behalf of Lance; jealousy directed toward the nameless douchebag. Why would she do this? Why with him? Why not with me? What did this shitstain have that I didn’t?

The latter few shamed me later, but I couldn’t help what I felt. She and I had become close over the previous months, and while I assured myself I wouldn’t have slept with her due to my views on adultery, it still rankled.

It was a dumb take, but I was barely twenty-three. I was allowed some dumb takes. Of course, she wouldn’t have approached me for this; I could upend her life if she did and if I wasn’t amenable. But still. It stung a little. Even if you don’t want to dance, it’s nice to be asked.

I had just opened my mouth to say something, or maybe shout it, when the douchebag grunted, “Yeah, baby, who owns this fucking cunt? Ain’t that cuck husband of yours, so it’s gotta be–”

Ella moved almost faster than I could follow; I guess that CrossFit really did pay off. In one smooth motion, she whipped off his cock, pivoted around, pried his fingers off her ponytail with one hand, and slapped him across the face with the other. “I told you, don’t ever say shit like that about Lance! You’re a convenience, at best. I’d pick him over you every day of the fucking week if I could. If you ever disrespect him again–” 

I missed the rest of her words, as I’d stepped back when she swung around, hoping she hadn’t seen me. However, the angry voices that I heard as I snuck out the sliding glass door and closed it behind me told me that playtime was likely over. 

The venom in her tone as she defended Lance left me more confused than ever. She was cheating on him! Then, I thought, ‘Wait, she was cheating on him, right? Or do they have an open marriage?’ I didn’t know any cuckolds, or at least I didn’t think I did, but I never got a weird vibe off of either of them. Besides, Ella had reacted so viscerally to the term that I couldn’t square the idea of Lance being a willing cuck.

I speed-walked away from her house and into the alley just around the bend, trying to figure out what to do next. Tell Lance? Confront Ella? Sit on the info until I had more to go on? Or… no, of course: do what I’d been doing since I arrived in King’s Forest. Go talk to one of the folks that had been helping me for months, and who also had known Ella and Lance for years longer than I had. The Alvarezes’ house was closer, but she watched Ella’s kids when she ran errands. The next nearest was the Taylors’, so off I went to ruin Mary Taylor’s Tuesday afternoon.

I glanced over my shoulder after ringing her doorbell, nervously looking over my shoulder like an East Berlin contact in an old spy thriller. You know, the guy that gets killed in the opening ten minutes. 

Mary opened the door and reacted to my distress. “Heavens, Doug, what’s wrong?”

“Mrs. Taylor–”

“Mary, Doug. You make me feel like an old lady when you say, ‘Mrs. Taylor.’” 

I threw another glance towards Ella’s house. “Mary, please. I need to talk to someone.”

“Well, come on in, then. Always happy to lend an ear.” I ducked in the door as soon as she stepped aside, trying to figure out how to open the conversation. She placed a palm on my shoulder and gave me a reassuring smile as she steered me towards her couch. “Doug. Honey. Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay.”

Concerted, I couldn’t hold it in anymore. “Ella is cheating on Lance!”

Mary’s smile froze, then came back sweeter than ever. More disingenuous, too, but I scarcely noticed at the time. “Why, sweetie, whatever are you talking about?”

“It’s Wednesday. We’re supposed to work out today, and I–”

“Doug, sweetie, it’s Tuesday.”

“Just listen!” She recoiled from my vehemence and, abashed, I apologized. “I’m sorry. It’s… Okay, it’s Tuesday, but I thought it was Wednesday. We work out every Wednesday at one, so when I knocked, and Ella didn’t open the door, I went around to the back and through the sliding glass door. And that’s when I found… them. Her and some guy.”

“Are you sure they were…?”

With a snort, I replied, “Unless she’s added two-person half-naked yoga to her repertoire, yes. They were clearly having sex, and it sounded like it wasn’t the first time.”

Mary chewed on her lip. “Did she see you?”

“I don’t think so.” I sighed, staring off into space. “I can’t believe she’s cheating on him. She always acts like she thinks Lance hung the moon and the stars.”

Slowly, she said, “Well, you know, maybe she does?” My head snapped towards her, mouth opened and ready to object, but she continued. “No, hear me out. Maybe she does love him. Maybe… maybe she just has some needs that he’s not able to fill right now, and–”

“Okay, no! Just- just no. That’s– no one who loves their spouse can cheat on him like that. Even if– even if–”

She leaned in slightly. “Even if?”

I looked off to one side, embarrassed at the language I’d have to use around an older woman; it felt like cursing in front of my mom. “While they were… coupling, the guy called Lance a cuck, and Ella slapped the hell out of him. Told him to never say anything like that again, or else. Said she’d pick Lance over the other guy every day of the week if she could.”

“Mmm.” Mary seemed to give this some thought. “Seems like you heard it from the horse’s mouth, then. Doug…” She laid her hand on my knee. “Sometimes people, women and men alike, they can’t get what they need from the ones they love when they need it. Lance works such long hours, and, like I said, she’s a young woman with needs. If he can’t meet them…”

My jaw dropped. She couldn’t possibly be suggesting what I thought she was.

“Doug, listen. You’ve said it yourself: she adores Lance. He adores her, and the children, and the life they have together. Is what she’s doing right? No, I wouldn’t go that far. But if having the occasional tryst with some CrossFit guy to blow off steam every once in a while is how she manages to… fulfill her needs when Lance is too busy, as long as she’s careful, which is the greater harm? Her infidelity or you telling him?”

She fucking was. I stammered out, “H- how… how can you defend it?”

“Oh, sweetie, listen. I’m not defending her cheating; I’m defending their happiness, Lance’s included. If he found out about this, that would be the end of their marriage.”

“Maybe it should be!”

“Doug, you don’t mean that. She loves him, and he loves her. And their kids… Can you imagine what that would do to them? Divorce is awful for children. It’s always hardest on them, even though the parents rarely can see that; I should know.”

“What do you mean?”

“My folks split up when I was about Hunter’s age. It was awful. Their divorce became this knockdown, drag-out thing. I didn’t understand any of it at the time, why Mama suddenly hated Daddy and why I could only see Daddy once a month, and he lived in this tiny apartment and… God, he’d lost so much weight, and his smile just wasn’t…” Mary’s voice cracked. “It wasn’t…”

She pulled a tissue from the box on her coffee table and dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t know it at the time, but Daddy had cheated, and Mama wanted to extract as much blood as she could. She did, too, just tore his ass up in the divorce. Pardon my language.” An embarrassed grimace snuck onto Mary’s face at her minor faux pas, but I just chuckled and motioned for her to continue.

Mary looked down at the soiled tissue in her hands. “My older sister, she had a better inkling of what was going on, and she took Mama’s side. She was old enough to understand that Daddy was cheating, although she didn’t have a grown-up notion of what that meant.” 

Her gaze drifted toward me. “She didn’t have a grown-up notion of… of why someone might cheat, either. And with only a couple of days a month with us, and no way to explain to her why he’d been ‘kissing another lady,’ as she put it, well… I mean, it’s not like he could say to his eight-year-old girl, ‘Mommy hasn’t wanted to be intimate since your sister was born, and I was at the end of my tether, and I made a bad choice.’

“I was a Daddy’s girl, so I stayed in his corner, but Sharon–my sister–didn’t, and it caused rifts. Between me and her and between her and Daddy. Between me and Mama, too, once I was old enough to ‘understand’ in her eyes and still didn’t take her side. Most of them… most of them healed eventually, but the scars are still there. To this day, I think Mama trusts my sister more than me, and I know Sharon resents Daddy for cheating, even if she knows why now.”

Mary sighed. “I wish Daddy hadn’t cheated. It was wrong, and I know that. But I wish Mama had the grace to understand why he did, how unhappy he’d been.” She shook her head. “But that’s not Lance and Ella’s marriage. Theirs is a happy one; please, don’t mess that up for them. Things are getting better. The economy’s getting better, slowly but surely, and he’s home more often now.”

I felt uneasy. Realization had slowly crept up on me throughout the conversation, but as I mulled her words over, something suddenly clicked. “I never said he was ‘some CrossFit guy.’ You’ve known about this for a while, haven’t you?”

A brief pause before she admitted, “I have.”

“How did you find out? Did she come to you, or did you catch them together, or…?”

My neighbor delicately picked her way through her next words. “No. No, I found out secondhand. Julia Alvarez… discovered them when she had an emergency and had to drop Hunter and Zoe back off early with Ella.”

“... And she told you?”

“No. She told Theresa, who… well, Theresa is who she is. She told a few other folks, including me.”

I blinked a few times before responding. “‘A few others?’ For God’s sake, how many people know about this?”

“Maybe… maybe a dozen.”

“A dozen people know about this?!”

“Couples. A dozen couples.” She bit her lip, wincing slightly. “Give or take.”

A dozen fucking couples. I slumped back on the couch, more agog at this new information than I was about Ella’s affair. Twenty-four people–give or goddamned take–my friends and neighbors, knew that our friend was cheating on her husband and hadn’t told him. 

Or me! It bothered me that they’d kept the secret from him; no matter how Mary might have justified it to herself, it wasn’t right. But it hurt me to know that everyone else around me had this secret, and they had kept me on the outside, too. If it had been closely guarded, that would be one thing, but goddamned near everyone that mattered to me in my neighborhood had known. I felt like a fool for believing that they’d seen me as a peer or even a near-peer.

“I always heard that the husband was the last one to know. I suppose he still will be, but…” I shook my head, chuckling mirthlessly.

Mary reached out to touch my shoulder. “Doug, please don’t misunderstand. No one was trying to hide this from you because we wanted to exclude you. We think the world of you. All of us. That’s the reason we didn’t tell you. We didn’t want to burden you with the secret; if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t have to do anything about it.

“You still don’t, though. I hope you understand that, too. We’ve chosen, as a group, to not say anything to her because we want their family to be happy. We know you do, too, but also that…” She smiled, a bit melancholy. “When you’re young, it’s easy to think of things as black and white. We didn’t want you to have to wrestle with the grey in between, not on this.”

After ruminating silently for a few moments, I stood, and Mary stood with me. “Doug, please don’t–”

I cut her off, speaking with a touch more curtness than I’d intended. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I won’t… I’m not going to do anything tonight. But I need to go for a walk and clear my head.” She made as if to hug me, but I moved away. That hurt her; I could see it. ‘Good,’ I thought petulantly. ‘She can see how it feels to be held at arm’s length.’

Mrs. Taylor–it was hard to think of her as Mary when it became clear she didn’t think of me as an adult–followed me to her front door, asking once more that I not tell Lance. I didn’t bother to respond, instead mumbling a goodbye before letting the storm door swing freely behind me to shut in her face.

I walked aimlessly through the subdivision, trying to clear my head. Twenty-four people, at least. More, probably; did the whole goddamned subdivision know? How could that many people not say anything? The answer came to me immediately: because everyone loved Ella, and, at best, they liked Lance. No one loved Lance. 

‘Maybe not even his wife,’ I thought gloomily. How could a loving wife do that to her husband? I just couldn’t understand it. If this were a mutual thing, like if they were swingers or in an open marriage or even a cuck/hotwife thing, I could sort of understand it, but not this.

I knew that Ella loved Lance, though. It wasn’t a put-on; I’d spent enough time with her to know how devoted she was to him. She was always excited to talk about him and his work, their college days, and their family. Once, when she and I were hanging out at a party, after she’d had one too many, she even bragged about what a good lover he was. I had literally never heard her complain about him, at all, other than that she wished he could be home more often. Even those comments, though, were peppered with appreciation for the sacrifices he made for his family.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t even notice that my feet had carried me back to my front stoop. I stole a glance toward Lance and Ella’s house, but the whole block was quiet; it usually was during that time of day, in the early afternoon before the neighborhood kids got home from school.

Work barely managed to occupy me. The previous night’s coding binge had given me plenty of breathing room, and without the pressure of a deadline to motivate me, I found it almost impossible to keep my mind on my job. I tried making a late lunch instead, something more filling than the breakfast bar I’d grabbed before racing over to find Ella with her fuckbuddy, but I wasn’t particularly hungry, either. Yardwork was out, too; I’d mowed and trimmed two days previously, and anything I did out there would be busywork.

The longer I tried to find something to distract me, the more it surprised me that Ella didn’t come by to talk. She had to know by then that I’d seen her, even if she hadn’t spotted me at the time. Mary Taylor relying on my goodwill alone to protect our neighbor’s secret seemed an unlikely answer. I thought perhaps that Ella was giving me time to decompress, or to get her story straight, or maybe even to confess to Lance. I hoped for that last one; it would have made my life so much easier.

Still, when the doorbell rang, I wasn’t surprised. What did surprise me was who had rung. Bob Grayson smiled broadly when I opened the door, a six-pack of my favorite beer in hand. “I think you might need someone to talk to right about now.” 

Of course, he knew. If anyone would know about an open secret in the neighborhood, the Graysons would. The feeling of being excluded needled at me harder than ever, but I took the proffered bottles. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.”

We sat at my kitchen table. Neither of us spoke until after we’d popped the caps off and taken a few pulls; after that, he asked me to sum up what I knew and what Mary had told me. He nodded sagely as I went along, asking a question here and there to clarify. When I finished, he sat back in his chair, took another swig, stifled a belch, and sighed, “Hell.”

“Pretty much.”

“Doug… Son, I know Mary told you this already, but I want you to hear it from me: we weren’t trying to shut you out because we didn’t trust you. That wasn’t it at all. It’s like she said: we didn’t want you to have to deal with knowing. Knowing something like this, it weighs on a man, whether he acts on the knowledge or not.

“We know you’re a good man, Doug. Trustworthy. Loyal. That’s why we didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want to put you in a position where you’d need to choose who to be loyal to.” He looked out the front window. Kids were making their way home from school outside, laughing and running. A few of them dragged ass as if home was the last place they wanted to go; I sympathized.

“How long?” It had occurred to me, after the conversation with Mary, that I’d never found out some of the particulars, ones that might decide my course of action. “How long has she been cheating on Lance? How long have you known?”

He drummed his fingers on the table, a frown on his face. A few moments passed before he finally said, “To my understanding, it started a bit over a year ago. I found out, along with most of the folks that know, a few weeks after that, not long before you moved in.”

“A year? How… You’re a church elder, for God’s sake! How did they convince you to go along with this?”

His frown deepened. “They didn’t convince me, Doug. I convinced them.”