As Grace is on her way home from a visit to her mother, she finds that her husband’s ex-wife is seated next to her on the flight. One thing leads to another, and Clara ends up telling Grace all about her recent contact with Oscar. At the end of the flight, Grace has to decide what she wants to do about her marriage…
I never thought that something as simple as an airplane seat assignment could destroy my entire marriage. But here I am, sitting at a coffee shop in an airport, trying to figure out how blind I’ve been.
An upset woman sitting at a coffee shop
It all started when I boarded a flight to visit my family. I sat down, buckled in, and was ready to spend the next few hours in blissful ignorance of the world. I had downloaded a book just for the flight, and I hoped to sip a gin and tonic while reading my way through it.
But that dream was shattered early on when a woman slid into the seat next to me. She smiled politely, and we exchanged one of those awkward “I guess we’re flight-seat neighbors” looks. It wasn’t anything unusual.
An iPad and a drink on a flight table
But then I saw the name on her boarding pass as she slipped it into the seat pocket in front of her. It was a name that I had heard too many times whenever Oscar and I spoke about his past.
I was sitting next to my husband’s ex-wife, Clara. With a few sly glances, I knew that it was her. I remembered seeing their wedding photos when I moved into Oscar’s house.
A woman sitting in an airplane
“You can look through them before I pack everything away into the basement,” he said. “I’ve gotten a bunch of boxes. I’m just waiting for Clara to let me know if she wants them before I destroy them, you know?”
I nodded.
“I get it,” I said. “Despite your marriage ending, this is a core memory in your lives.”
I remember how Oscar looked at me when I said that, like he wanted to say more but just didn’t. Instead, he smiled and walked away into the kitchen.
A woman sitting on the floor looking through an album
Now, sitting next to Clara, I was certain that it was her. I tried to keep my cool, not wanting to acknowledge the fact that I knew exactly who she was. But then she turned to me and said my name, shyly, as if testing it out in her mouth.
“Grace, you’re Oscar’s new wife, right?” she said slowly.
I nodded, stunned.
It was one thing for me to know who she was because I was married to Oscar, but how could she possibly know who I was?
A woman sitting in an airplane
She studied me for a moment as if trying to figure out what Oscar saw in me.
“I recognized you from social media,” she explained. “Oscar has you all over his profile. That was something he didn’t do with me. But you’re very beautiful, Grace.”
“Thank you,” I replied nervously.
I couldn’t believe that I was sitting next to my husband’s ex-wife on a flight. This was the woman that he had stood beside in a church, promising to spend the rest of his life with. And now, I was the third party in their promise to God.
A phone opened to social media
It made me feel strange. This was the ghost of my husband’s past, and we were stuck together for the next three hours.
To my surprise, Clara kept the conversation going. She seemed to want to get to know me and nothing about her demeanor was off. At first. Instead, she was warm and pleasant and talked excitedly about the flight.
“I’m usually pretty nervous about flying,” she said. “But it’s a help having someone that I can talk to. I went away because we were celebrating my cousin. Her wedding is coming up, and we surprised her with a bridal shower.”
A woman sitting in an airplane
“That sounds lovely,” I said, warming up to Clara quickly. “I’m going back from visiting my mother. She wasn’t well, and I just wanted to spend a week taking care of her.”
Then, almost casually, Clara dropped the first bomb.
“Did you know that the house you’re living in,” she began easily, as if she were commenting on the weather, “Was supposed to be my house? My dream house, actually.”
The exterior of a mid-century home
“Excuse me?” I asked, a little blindsided.
“Oh, Oscar didn’t tell you? Yeah, we designed it while we were living in the apartment. I think Oscar moved into the house just before you did. But every detail in that house? Yeah, I had a say in it all. Oscar must have liked it all so much that he didn’t want to change anything at all.”
My heart pounded in my chest.
A couple looking at house plans
Our home, the place where we’d built so many memories, wasn’t even ours at all? It was Oscar and Clara’s…
I felt a wave of nausea hit me.
“Oscar never mentioned that,” I said finally. “I just knew that he moved in two months before our wedding. And then I moved in after our honeymoon. We’ve been in there for three years now, and we’ve made some changes.”
Clara chuckled softly.
An upset woman sitting in an airplane
“I’m not surprised, Grace. He always did like to keep his little secrets,” she said.
She turned away for a moment, staring out the window, lost in thought.
I wanted to change the subject, to steer us back to safer waters, but she wasn’t done.
“And the flowers, Grace,” she continued, her voice much softer now. “Oscar still sends me the loveliest flowers every year. On our anniversary, and on my birthday. Tulips for both days. He always remembered that they were my favorite. Even the day our divorce was finalized, he bought me a bouquet.”
A vase of tulips
My mouth went dry and fuzzy.
“Flowers? Seriously?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Clara nodded, a smile slowly forming on her face as she thought about it.
“This year, they arrived right on time. The delivery guy knocked on the door early in the morning with a little birthday cake, too. It’s almost funny, isn’t it? A man who could barely remember to take out the trash but never forgets to send his ex-wife flowers.”
A cake in a box and a vase of tulips
My chest tightened, and for a moment, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. This was way more than I could handle. I wanted to get up, to leave, but there was nowhere to go.
I was trapped thousands of feet in the air, with the woman who was just dismantling my life piece by piece.
Clara was quiet for a moment, and I wondered if her speech was over. Of course, it wasn’t.
An upset woman sitting in an airplane
“And just so you know,” she added, leaning closer to me, her eyes boring into mine, “Oscar calls me whenever things get rough. Like a few months ago when you guys had that fight about him spending too many long nights at the office. And last week… when he said that you two fought over something and you packed up to go to your mother.”
I was speechless.
“He always calls me when he needs someone to talk to. You know, when he feels a bit lost.”
An upset man talking on the phone
My head was spinning. This couldn’t be real at all. How could the man I thought I knew, the man I had married, still be so deeply entangled in his past that I was nothing more than a placeholder?
“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.
She shrugged, her expression almost sympathetic.
“I don’t know, Grace-y,” she said. “You seem like a nice girl, and I thought you deserved to know the truth.”
A woman sitting in an airplane
I wanted to scream, to cry, to demand answers from this woman, but instead, I just sat there completely numb.
When Oscar and I got together, he constantly doted on me. He sent me flowers every week and spoiled me with food deliveries. But we were working toward something, toward our relationship. Why was he doing this for someone who should have been in his past?
Clara and I didn’t speak after that. I stared blankly at the seat in front of me, my mind racing. Every detail of my life with Oscar replayed in my head, now colored by her revelations.
A couple with a bouquet of roses
Everything felt tainted.
When the plane landed and we were all filing out, Clara turned to me.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and I think I believed her. In her own way, she was just as trapped in his web as I was.
I didn’t respond, I just walked away.
A woman walking through an airport
Now, I’m sitting in this coffee shop trying to figure out how I’m going to get home and face my husband. Before thinking, I picked up my phone to text Oscar.
It’s over, Oscar. Speak to Clara.
I hit send before I could change my mind. It wasn’t what Oscar did, it was the trust behind it.
An upset woman sitting at a coffee shop
What would you have done?
My 63-Year-Old Neighbor Became the Reason for My Divorce from My Husband – And It’s Not about Cheating
Grace and Tom’s married life was perfect until they moved to a new neighborhood with a strange old woman as their neighbor. One day, after Tom visited the mysterious woman, he was ready to walk out on his marriage without any explanation…
Life with my husband was like living a dream. At 34, I often marveled at how perfect our life together seemed. I understood that most marriages faced turmoil, but Tom and I seemed to be cut off from that.
A happy couple
We had been married for seven and a half years, and two children later, Tom, at 41, was still very much the perfect man I had met years ago.
Every morning, he brought me coffee in bed, and most evenings, he’d surprise me with flowers or boxes of chocolate.
A box of chocolate and flowers
Six months ago, we moved into a new house in a quiet neighborhood.
“The kids are going to have to get used to a quiet life,” Tom said when we first moved in. “They’re used to the city life.”
But they were the reason we moved to the new house anyway. It felt like the perfect place to raise our family, and the kids’ new school was nearby.
Teenage siblings
“They’ll be fine,” I said. “Once they get into their routine, I don’t think they’ll know the difference.”
