Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Caleb goes to Jeremy's house at seven the next morning.
I know because Jeremy records that too.
The live video lasts less than four minutes before the platform removes it, but that is plenty of time for three thousand people to watch my husband pound on his best friend's door.
I am one of them.
"This is unhealthy," Ivy says from behind me.
"So is arsenic. People still study it."
I sit at the kitchen counter in the apartment I moved back into twelve hours ago, wrapped in Caleb's college sweatshirt because it was mixed into my clothes. I should take it off. I do not.
On-screen, Jeremy opens the door holding his phone at chest height.
"Look who finally found his balls," he says.
Caleb reaches for the phone. The image spins, catching blue sky, brick wall, and Jeremy's laughing face.
"Give me every recording," Caleb says.
"Ask your wife. She keeps all your other property."
The comment section moves faster than I can read. Some viewers think the fight is staged. Others recognize Caleb from the kiss. A stranger writes my full business name and posts a link to my website.
I report it. The link appears three more times.
"Turn it off," Ivy says.
"If I turn it off, it still happens."
"Watching will not give you control."
"Neither did being blind."
She sits beside me without asking again.
On-screen, Caleb's knuckles are split. Jeremy has a bruise along his jaw from the confrontation at my apartment building's parking lot, something Caleb never mentioned. I wonder how many fights have occurred around me while everyone insists they are protecting me from conflict.
Jeremy angles the phone to make Caleb look wild.
"Tell everyone why Dahlia really left," he says. "Tell them she has been waiting for a reason to control you."
"She left because she watched me betray her."
"She left because she loves drama."
"You posted my wife crying at her own reception account. You do not get to diagnose anyone's need for attention."
Jeremy's smile thins. "At least Sable knows how to have fun."
Caleb's fist curls.
"Don't," I whisper to a man who cannot hear me.
For one second, I think he will hit Jeremy before the physical struggle later in the clip. Instead he opens his hand.
"Sable committed sexual assault with your help," Caleb says. "If she thinks that was fun, she can explain it on record."
The seriousness wipes the amusement from Jeremy's face.
"You used her name to trick me."
"I tried to save you from making the biggest mistake of your life."
"By hiring Sable?"
Ivy pauses the video.
"There," she says. "He admitted it."
"Jeremy hired her. We knew that."
"We suspected it. Now we know."
She restarts the clip.
Jeremy backs onto the porch. "You talked about Sable for years. Then Dahlia came along, started choosing your clothes and scheduling your weekends, and suddenly you were pretending you wanted to be a suburban husband."
"She didn't make me stop behaving like an asshole. I grew up. You should try it."
"You kissed Sable. You would have fucked her if there hadn’t been a crowd.”
Caleb's face twists. "And then I threw her off me. Show everyone that part."
"You don't get to blame the edit for what the camera caught."
"No, I get to blame you for lying to me, putting your hands on my face, and telling me the woman touching me was Dahlia. I get to blame you for bringing my ex into a room full of people three days before my wedding. The kiss after I saw her is on me. Everything else is on you."
The admission makes my chest ache. He sounds exactly the way I wanted him to sound through my apartment door. Honest. Furious. Unwilling to excuse himself.
It still does not change what happened.
Jeremy gives a contemptuous laugh. "She already has you reciting the approved statement."
"Dahlia isn't speaking to me."
"Then maybe she never loved you as much as you think."
Caleb lunges.
The phone falls. Someone swears. The video catches a sneaker, the underside of a porch chair, and two grown men crashing into a hedge.
The livestream ends.
"Well," Ivy says. "That was dignified."
I put the phone facedown. "Did he hit him?"
"I hope so."
"Ivy."
"What? Jeremy has been begging for a fist to find his mouth since high school."
Caleb calls me ten minutes later. I do not answer. He leaves a voicemail.
"He says he doesn't have the original. He says one of the groomsmen took it, but he will not tell me who. I'm finding it, Dahlia. I swear I am."
His voice is breathless. There is a split at the corner of his lip in the screenshot already circulating online.
Jeremy posts his own statement an hour later. Caleb attacked him because the full recording proves he welcomed Sable before the blindfold. Dahlia had been controlling him for years. Jeremy was only trying to stop a doomed marriage.
The comment section fills with strangers evaluating my face, my body, and my suitability as a wife.
One writes that Sable is hotter.
Another says Caleb obviously settled for me.
I delete every social account from my phone.
At noon, Sable finally sends the rest of her message.
Jeremy paid me to dance. He didn't pay Caleb to kiss me back.
Below it is a photograph of the two of them together at the bachelor party. Sable is smiling. Caleb's blindfold hangs loose around his neck. The image is cropped at his shoulders, hiding whatever happens below.
I stare at it until Ivy takes the phone from me.
"That could have been taken before or after anything."
"He looks happy."
"It is a photograph. People look happy in hostage videos."
"He told me he shoved her away."
"Then we find the person who took the picture."
"No." I stand so quickly the stool scrapes the floor. "I am done investigating my own husband. If he wants me to believe him, he can bring me the truth. All of it."
Across town, Jeremy posts one last sentence before locking his account.
Ask Caleb what he said when Sable offered him a second chance.