Abandoned. Divorce from a Traitor

“Anton? Something happened? I cooked dinner—your favorite dish…”

“Nothing happened,” he says. He gulps down something pale, grimaces, and puts a stack of bills on the dresser.

“So something happened. We need to talk.”

My heart dropped somewhere down into my stomach. I slowly lowered the piano lid. In the silence of the apartment, that sound hit like a blow.

“I’m leaving,” he said. Simply, matter-of-factly, looking past me, at the pattern on the carpet.

“I’m leaving you. For another woman.”

Four words. Only four words spoken by my husband in our living room while his favorite dinner cooled in the kitchen. They weren’t said in a shout. Anton said them as if he were reporting that there was no bread at the store. And it was even more frightening. Even worse.

“What?!” I didn’t recognize my own voice. It became thin and чужою.

“To Eve,” he said, pronouncing her name like it explained everything. “My assistant. She… it’s different with her. We’re living in the same rhythm, you understand? I’m tired of this silence, of the same day. I want to live.”