The Slap

For a few seconds, none of us moved.

The woman stood beside Ethan’s car with tears on her cheeks.

Ethan stopped walking.

I looked at him, waiting for recognition.

There was none.

At least, not yet.

The woman opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but no words came out.

That silence made everything worse.

I stepped in front of Ethan.

“Why do you keep following my husband?” I asked.

The woman looked at me, startled.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Her voice was unsteady.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Then why are you always there?” I asked. “His office. The grocery store. Our church.”

Ethan touched my arm.

“Claire, calm down.”

I turned toward him.

“Don’t tell me to calm down. I have been warning you for weeks.”

The woman looked at Ethan again.

Not at me.

At him.

Her face changed when she saw him up close.

It looked almost like grief.

“Ethan,” she said softly.

My husband froze.

I felt it through his hand on my arm.

“You know my name?” he asked.

The woman covered her mouth.

Then she started crying harder.

That should have stopped me.

It should have made me step back and listen.

Instead, fear took over.

I thought she was unstable.

I thought she had been watching him long enough to learn everything about him.

I thought she had finally decided to get close.

“Stay away from him,” I said.

The woman lowered her hand.

“Please,” she whispered. “I only need one minute.”

“You have been following him for three weeks.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

She nodded.

That answer snapped something inside me.

I stepped forward and slapped her.

The sound cut through the parking lot.

A man near the pharmacy entrance stopped walking.

A woman loading groceries into her car turned around.

The older woman stumbled back and touched her cheek.

She didn’t yell.

She didn’t threaten me.

She just looked at me with an expression so devastated that, for one second, I forgot why I was angry.

Then Ethan shoved me away from her.

“What the hell did you do?” he shouted.

I had never heard him speak to me like that.

“She’s been following you,” I said. “You wouldn’t listen.”

Ethan moved between us.

The woman was shaking now.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

She wasn’t speaking to me.

She was speaking to him.

Ethan stared at her face.

His anger slowly disappeared.

Something else replaced it.

Confusion.

Then shock.

The woman touched the small scar near her eyebrow.

Ethan looked at the scar as if it meant something.

His breathing changed.

“What is your name?” he asked.

The woman swallowed.

“Margaret.”

Ethan stepped closer.

I watched his eyes move over her face.

Her eyes.

Her mouth.

The dimple in her left cheek.

Then his knees almost gave out.

The woman reached for him, but stopped before touching him.

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Margaret said.

Ethan made a sound I had never heard before.

Not a word.

Something broken.

Then he wrapped his arms around her.

I stood there, completely lost.

“Ethan,” I said. “What are you doing?”

He didn’t answer.

He held the woman as she cried against his chest.

I stepped closer.

“Do you know her?”

Ethan finally looked at me.

His face was wet with tears.

“She’s my mother,” he said.

I laughed.

I couldn’t help it.

The words made no sense.

“Your mother is dead.”

Ethan looked back at the woman in his arms.

Then he whispered, “That’s what my father told me.”