Heiress Says She Discovered Husband’s Affair Through a Strange Phone Call—Then He Abandoned Their 3 Kids

 

Heiress Says She Discovered Husband’s Affair Through a Strange Phone Call—Then He Abandoned Their 3 Kids

A mom of three from a line of wealthy and storied New Yorkers is now laying bare her heartbreak and confusion after her husband of 20 years admitted to an affair, she says.

The very next day, as she details in a new book, he declared that he wanted a divorce and didn’t want custody of their children.

“This was not just an affair. This was not just a rejection of me,” Belle Burden, 56, writes in her memoir, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage, which was published by The Dial Press on Jan. 13. “He was abandoning all of it, and all of us.”

Burden has ties to the Vanderbilt family and her grandmother was the revered magazine editor and socialite Babe Paley. In June 1999, Burden, a Harvard-educated lawyer, married Henry Patterson Davis, a hedge-fund executive.

The couple raised their three children, two girls and a boy, in New York and at their home on Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts.

David did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

In her memoir — which began as a New York Times Modern Love essay — Burden recounts falling in love with her husband, whom she identifies as James.

In an author's note, Burden explains that while the memoir is largely true to her own memories, there have been changes: "It recounts events as accurately as I can remember them. I have used my own name and the real names of my grandparents, parents, stepmother, brother, and sister-in-law. I have changed all other names. In some cases, I have also changed identifying details."

Beyond the split from her husband, she also writes in Strangers about her dedication to raising their kids while he oversaw the family's finances.

But her enviable marriage came to a violent halt at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, she writes.

After eating dinner together, the then-50-year-old mom writes that she received a voicemail from a strange number: “I’m sorry to tell you this, but your husband is having an affair with my wife,” the voice on the other end of the line told her. 

That same evening, Burden’s husband admitted to having an affair with a banker, which he said had begun a few weeks ago, according to her book.

Acknowledging his embarrassment, Burden's husband assured her, “But, I swear, it didn’t mean anything,” she writes.

That same night, according to Burden, she and her husband learned that the banker in the affair had tried to die by suicide but survived.

Reeling from the multiple emotional hits, Burden writes, she lay on the bathroom floor for a long time.

“I imagined the weeks ahead in lockdown, keeping things stable for the girls, doing therapy with James on Zoom,” she writes in Strangers. “We were stuck together, in the same house, on an island. I thought, This is going to be a nightmare. I could not imagine forgiving him, but I also could not imagine a life without him; I loved him so completely.”

By early the next morning, Burden's husband said that he wanted a divorce, she writes. 

Babe Paley.

Getty

“You’ll be fine. You’re still young,” Burden recalls her husband telling her before he left to check on his mistress. When he reached New York, he was even more resolute, according to her book.

“I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t,” Burden’s husband told her, she writes. “You can have the house and the apartment. You can have custody of the kids.”

He added, according to her book: “I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it.”

So came the end of Burden’s marriage. Despite her belief that he would rethink sharing custody of their children, he proceeded to buy a two-bedroom apartment with no reserved space for them to sleep over, she writes.

Belle Burden's memoir, "Strangers.".

The Dial Press

When he few back to Martha’s Vineyard for a 90-minute visit to share the news of their separation with two of their children while the other was at a friend’s house, he had the gall to ask for a sandwich, Burden recalls.

Despite her shock, Burden made him one. 

“Wouldn’t a good mother make their child’s father a sandwich?” she remembers thinking in her memoir. “Wasn’t this how the world said you were supposed to behave in a divorce? Be nice to each other in front of the kids?”

After a painful legal battle, the exes reached a settlement in their divorce proceedings, according to Burden's book. But she writes that she never received answers from her now-ex about the origins of his affair or why he decided to sever himself from their family.

Susan Burden, Henry Davis and Belle Burden in 2008.

PATRICK MCMULLAN /Patrick McMullan via Getty

While her former spouse has been “kind and loving” when around their children, he hasn’t changed his position on co-parenting, she writes: The kids haven’t had an overnight stay, vacation or holiday with him since he left Martha’s Vineyard in March 2020.

While Burden knows he hasn’t remarried, she doesn’t know if he stayed with the banker or if it was his only affair.

“I don’t know if he made the decision to leave suddenly after being caught, or if he’d carefully planned his exit for years,” she writes. “I don’t know what role the pandemic played. I don’t know how much of it was about money. I don’t know how much of it was about me.”

She adds, “I don’t know why he left. I don’t think I ever will.”

Belle Burden with her daughter.

Belle Burden/Instagram

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Despite the unanswered questions, Burden writes that she is freer than she could have ever imagined in her past life. 

“I don’t think I was a fully realized person when I was married,” Burden told The New York Times earlier this month. “And I never would have left. So in the end, it sounds crazy, and I wouldn’t have said this a couple years ago, but I’m glad it happened.”

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