Chapter 2
Paul followed me toward the stairs.
“Ashley and Ben’s venue flooded,” he said. “They needed somewhere else.”
“So your work emergency was a lie.”
“It was an emergency.”
“For whom?”
He looked toward the living room instead of at me. Paul rarely met my eyes when he lied.
It had taken me ten years to recognize the habit. He had spent the next eight trusting me not to challenge it.
Ashley approached us. She stopped beyond Paul’s shoulder rather than beside him.
“Grace, I’m sorry.” Her gaze moved to Paul before returning to me. “He told me you two were separated.”
“We slept in the same bed Wednesday night.”
She turned toward him.
Paul’s jaw tightened. “I said we were practically separated.”
“You told me you were working late. You told her I was no longer your wife. Neither statement was true.”
I looked at the white cashmere wrap around Ashley’s shoulders.
“That was my mother’s,” I said.
Ashley touched the cashmere at her neck. “I didn’t know this was yours. Paul said I could wear it.”
I held out my hand. She hesitated, looked at him once more, then removed it.
The wrap had been my mother’s last birthday gift to me. Paul knew that.
He had watched me fold it into my suitcase before I left home.
I took it upstairs and entered the lake-view suite.
Ashley’s clothes covered the bed. Her makeup filled the vanity. For several seconds, I could not move.
I sat on the edge of the mattress with the wrap pressed to my chest.
My hands shook so badly that one of my mother’s pearl buttons tapped against my ring.
Three years of skipped lunches and postponed purchases had paid for this room.
I had pictured waking here at forty and believing the next part of my life could still contain something chosen for me.
Instead, my husband had placed another woman in my bed and wrapped her in something my mother had left behind.
I let myself cry until I heard footsteps on the stairs.
Then I stood.
I placed Ashley’s belongings carefully into her open suitcases and carried them to the guest room. I returned and put my own suitcase inside.
Olivia confronted me in the hall. “Mom, the venue flooded. They would have lost all their deposits. Dad said we could celebrate your birthday next weekend. I thought you’d be angry, but—”
“But what?”
“Ashley and Ben need the suite. It’s their engagement weekend. We made up the folding bed downstairs for you.”
“Beside the laundry room?”
Her silence answered me.
Olivia went downstairs. I stayed by the bedroom door.
Downstairs, Ashley whispered, “What if she makes us leave?”
“She won’t,” Olivia said.
“How do you know?”
Olivia’s voice dropped.
“Because she’s my mom. She gets angry, but she always stays.”
My daughter had known this would hurt me.
She had simply believed my pain would never inconvenience anyone else.
I went back into the suite and locked the door.