My Husband Told Me His “Work Wife” Was An Upgrade. Then I Found Out He Was Paying Her Rent While Telling Me To Budget. How Should I Handle This Dinner Invite?
Confrontation at the School
Jessica’s car was parked next to mine when I walked out of the elementary school at dismissal. She leaned against the driver’s side door looking exhausted, dark circles under her eyes like she hadn’t been sleeping either. The other teachers walked past giving me curious looks, probably wondering who this young woman was waiting by my car.
Jessica pushed off the door when she saw me, her arms wrapped around herself despite the warm afternoon. She demanded to know what I wanted from her, her voice shaking between anger and something that might have been fear. She said she never meant to hurt me, that she didn’t realize how serious things were with Craig.
I unlocked my car and tossed my work bag in the back seat before responding. I told her that ignorance wasn’t an excuse when you’re calling yourself someone’s work wife and accepting financial support from a married man. She stepped closer blocking my driver’s side door, insisting she needed to explain her side.
Jessica tried to paint herself as the victim while parents picked up their kids 50 ft away. She said Craig pursued her, made her think his marriage was basically over, told her I didn’t understand him.
I pulled out my phone and opened the photos I’d saved: screenshots of Craig’s credit card statements from the past 6 months. I held the screen up so she could see every lunch and coffee he’d bought her, every charge at restaurants he’d told me were business meetings. I scrolled through them slowly, highlighting the dates when he’d come home and told me we needed to budget more carefully.
The HR Meeting
Her face went pale as she realized how much documentation I had, how carefully I’d been paying attention while they both assumed I was too serious and too busy with fingerpainting to notice. She stopped talking, her mouth opening and closing without sound, and I told her to move away from my car. She did, stepping back onto the sidewalk while I climbed in and drove away without looking back.
The email from Fisel arrived the next morning while I was setting up art supplies for my class. The subject line said “HR investigation meeting request” and my stomach dropped so fast I had to sit down at my desk. Making this official meant there was no going back, no pretending this was just a scare tactic to make Craig and Jessica understand consequences.
Part of me felt guilty for potentially destroying Craig’s career, for being the person who reported him and set all this in motion. I texted Laya during my lunch break telling her about the email and the guilt eating at me. She wrote back immediately reminding me that Craig destroyed his own career by violating company policy. She said I was just holding him accountable for choices he made every single day for months.
Fisel’s office was smaller than I expected with generic corporate art on the walls and a desk covered in neat stacks of folders. He stood when I walked in two days later, shaking my hand with a firm grip and gesturing to the chair across from his desk. I’d brought everything in a large envelope: the co-signed lease documents, printed text messages between Craig and Jessica, even a written account of Craig’s drunken confession about their emotional affair.
Fisel opened the envelope carefully, spreading the documents across his desk like evidence at a crime scene. His face stayed professional but I could see the concern growing as he read through everything, especially when he got to the financial entanglement between a senior employee and junior subordinate.
