My Husband’s Other Wife Was My Maid of Honor Chapter 07

My Husband’s Other Wife Was My Maid of Honor Chapter 07 – The Woman in the Diner

Mara met me at a diner off the interstate, halfway between our two lives, at ten in the morning on a Friday.

She got there first. She had a booth in the back and a coffee she wasn’t drinking and I hadn’t noticed on the porch, under the robe – a stomach.

Maybe five months.

I stopped walking. She saw me see it.

“Yeah,” she said.

I sat down. The waitress came. We both said coffee like normal people.

“Congratulations,” I said, and it came out wrong, and Mara laughed the ugly way I’d laughed on her lawn, and

then her chin buckled and she pressed her napkin to her eyes.

“I found out three weeks ago,” she said. “I cried. Not happy crying.” She looked up. “I’ve been trying to leave

him for a year, Nora.”

“Then leave.”

“With what?” She spread her hands. “My name’s on nothing. The house is in his LLC. I stopped working when Poppy came because he wanted me home. He ‘handles the accounts.’ Every dollar I have came from him.” A beat. “Which, I now realize, means every dollar I have came from you.”

We sat with that.

Then I put Renata’s folder on the table and slid it across.

She read for a long time. The quitclaim. The forged signature. The HELOC with her name as co-signer on an

account she swore she’d never opened, and I believed her, because the signature was wrong there too.

“He forged mine as well,” she whispered.

“He forged everybody’s. We’re not special.”

“Nora.” She was pale. “Saturday. He told me Saturday. He said after the partner dinner, once the bonus posts, we’re taking Poppy and going to Charleston for good. He said you’d finally agreed to it.”

“He told me I’d agreed to a baby,” I said.

She stared at me.

Then she reached into her bag, took out her phone, and turned it toward me. A text from that morning. I’

Grant: Nearly there, baby. She’s been weirdly clingy this week but she doesn’t have a clue. Sat night the pagers get signed and then I’m free. She’ll sign whatever I put in front of her. She always does. 3 more days.

I read it maybe eight times.

She’ll sign whatever I put in front of her. She always does.

Something in me the soft part, the part that had been quietly waiting for him to be sorry, the part that had been rehearsing the version of this where he cries and says my name and I’m the one he chooses – that part finally sat down and shut up.

I wasn’t the wife. I wasn’t even the villain of the story he told her.

I was the administrative problem.

“Mara,” I said. “How much do you love him?”

She looked out the window at the parking lot for a long moment. Then she said, “I loved him so much I gave up my whole life and every friend I had, including you, and I told myself a story about it for six years so I could sleep.” Her hand went flat on her belly. “And two weeks ago he asked me if I was sure the timing worked out,

because he’d been away that month.”

Her mouth twisted.

“That’s how much I love him now,” she said.

“Okay.” I turned my coffee cup around. “Then I need to ask you something, and you can say no, and I’ll never contact you again.”

“Ask.”

“Saturday night his firm is announcing partners. Four hundred people at the Fairmont. His mother will be there. His whole department. Every single one of the friends who lied to me for six years.” I looked up. “I want

you to come.”

Mara went absolutely still.

“With Poppy?” she said.

“With Poppy.”

She was quiet so long I thought I’d lost her.

Then she said, “What do I wear?”