Chapter 6 #2
“Stop.” The word hits the room like a slap. “Don’t you dare stand in front of our families and play victim. Don’t you dare.”
“Mara, I swear, he told me—”
“Then let me ask you something.” I pull my phone from my clutch and hold it up. “This is a voicemail you left me three weeks ago.”
I tap play. Sloane’s voice fills the room through the speakers—warm, concerned, pitch-perfect:
“Hey, it’s me. I just—I feel so bad that Caleb’s never home. You deserve someone who shows up, Mara. Call me back, okay? Love you.”
“That’s you. Three weeks ago. Comforting me about my husband not being home.
” I stare at her. “Not I’m sorry about the divorce.
Not how’s the separation going. You called to tell me you feel bad that he’s never around.
Because you knew we were still married. You knew I was trying to save it.
You knew exactly where he was when he wasn’t with me because he was with you. ”
“I—”
“You are a liar.” My voice is shaking now and I don’t care.
The anger is climbing up my chest like fire and I let it come.
“You are a two-faced, backstabbing coward. I loved you like a sister for fifteen years. Fifteen. You held me on your bathroom floor when I found out my mom died. You looked me in the face and told me I wasn’t broken.
And this whole time—the lunches, the wine, the I’m here for you, babe—you were sleeping with my husband and smiling at me over appetizers and you didn’t even have the guts to end the friendship or stop the affair.
You wanted both. You wanted to keep him and keep me sad enough and grateful enough that I’d never look too close. ”
A sob rips out of her—ugly, wet, her whole body shaking. “Mara, please—”
“And the wedding.” I almost laugh. The sound comes out sharp and mean and I don’t recognize it and I don’t care.
“I went to the open house by your new place, Sloane. The realtor told me everything. Getting married in a couple months. A huge family. A nursery in the guest room. How exactly were you going to pull that off? Hmm? Were you going to invite me? Was I going to find out when the Christmas card showed up with someone else’s last name on it? ”
Sloane’s knees give out. She drops into her chair and her mother is already standing—Linda’s face gray and rigid, her mouth a tight line. She picks up her purse and walks out without a word. Amelia pushes back from the table and follows. The frosted doors swing shut behind them.
I turn back to Caleb.
He looks deflated. Caved in on himself, hands braced on the table, forehead shining with sweat.
Barbara is crying—harsh, ugly sounds that shake her shoulders.
Jen hasn’t let go of her mother but she’s staring at Caleb with something worse than anger.
Something that looks like she’s already decided he’s gone.
“Open your folder, Caleb.”
His fingers find the envelope. He pulls out the pages—divorce petition, financial restraining order freezing every marital account, notice of forensic audit on all shared assets. Filed this morning. Theo’s letterhead at the top.
“You don’t get a speech.” I set the remote on the table. “You get served.”
Clarence stands. Folds his napkin with deliberate care.
Takes Michelle’s elbow. They walk out without looking at Caleb, and two other couples follow before the doors stop swinging.
The Nguyens. The Petersons. One by one, chair by chair, every person who came here tonight thinking they were celebrating my marriage walks past my husband without a word.
Barbara pushes up from the table. Jen steers her toward the door. Barbara’s hand is clamped over her mouth and her mascara matches Sloane’s and she doesn’t look at her son. Not once. The door shuts behind them.
The room is gutted. Empty chairs. Crumpled napkins. Abandoned wineglasses. The projector still glowing on the screen behind me, the mortgage application lit up in silence.
Just three of us left. Me at the head of the table. Caleb standing with divorce papers in his hands and his whole life in pieces on the tablecloth. And Sloane, crumpled at the far end, alone on her side, every chair around her vacant, her face buried in her hands.
I pick up my clutch.
Caleb’s mouth opens. I hear him pull in a breath—the start of something. An explanation. An apology. Some sad little sentence that he thinks can reach across the wreckage and find me.
I walk past him. My heels crack against the hardwood. Through the frosted doors, down the bright hallway, and my knees almost buckle but I lock them and keep moving.
I hit the front door and the night air slaps my bare arms and I stop on the sidewalk and press my palm against the brick and breathe.
My fingers are shaking. My ribs ache from how hard my heart is hammering.
My face is wet—I don’t know when that started—and a sound punches out of me, raw and jagged, half-laugh and half-gasp, the noise of fourteen months cracking open all at once.
I pull out my phone. Text to Theo: Done.
Three dots.
How do you feel?
My whole body is buzzing like I grabbed a live wire and held on and I just burned down everything I built and I would do it again right now without changing a word.
Alive.
Send.