I am not the jealous woman, dripping with regret, that he will have you believe I am.
Whatever testimony he has given about me—the unfaithful one, the unstable one, the lying woman who set a good man's life on fire for no reason he could ever name—you can keep her. Because you do not return to the cage you barely escaped.
No, I will not envy you.
I will grieve you.
For he will not come to you as the devil. The devil never does. He will come disguised as the light. He will feel like salvation, like being seen at last, like a prayer finally answered in a single human face.
And for a while, you will believe that is what he is.
But eventually, you will see it. A darkness behind his eyes, looking out at you through a saint's face. And you will look away in disbelief, because it cannot possibly live in the same body as the man who holds you like something sacred. That will be the first lie you tell yourself on his behalf.
—It will not be the last—
He is his own first and most devoted believer. He cannot see the blood drying beneath his own fingernails. The lie ate so deep into him that it became his only true religion, and a man who believes his own gospel can make a convert out of anyone.
And he will make one of you.
You will learn his moods like doctrine and his silences like scripture. You will take his approval as the only heaven you were ever promised, and your own knowing as apostasy.
He will preach you a future from the pulpit of his mouth, and you will walk toward it for years, only to realize too late that the prophet never meant to arrive.
You will burn at the stake to keep his wrath at bay and call it love while he stands there holding the match. You will call yourself unlovable long before you ever call him cruel.
When he sins against you—and he will—he will not fall to his knees. He will widen his eyes, devout in his innocence. He will swear he was framed. And he will mourn that betrayal so beautifully that by the end of the night you will not be hunting him at all. You will be hunting her. The jealous ex, the demon who must have done this.
He will even help you look.
The two of you, searching the dark together for a sinner who was never there. You will defend his innocence against the truth of your own eyes. That is the only real miracle he has ever worked: to sin in front of you, and convince you a demon did it.
So, no…
I will not envy you.
But I will grieve the woman who, before the end, will no longer recognize her own face in the mirror. I will grieve the woman who will make herself small to fit inside his festering wounds and call every one her own fault. I will grieve the woman who will become fluent in his excuses before she ever becomes brave enough to name what he did to her.
Because that will be you. Just as it was every woman who came before.
And somewhere far enough away that you will never catch sight of me, I will be on my knees before your tombstone, reciting the eulogy for the woman you still believe will survive him.