My Husband’s Other Wife Was My Maid of Honor Chapter 09

My Husband’s Other Wife Was My Maid of Honor Chapter 09 The Red Dress

The Fairmont ballroom holds four hundred and twenty people.

I know because I asked.

I got my hair done. I had a glass of champagne in the car. Grant kept his hand on my knee the whole drive and told me he loved me twice, and I said it back both times, and I meant something by it – I’m not sure what

A funeral, maybe.

We walked in at 7:10. Cassie was there, because her husband is an associate at the firm; she saw me and

went the color of the tablecloth. Dana was near the bar. Jules had texted me nine times that week and I hadn

answered one.

Diane was at table four in navy. She wouldn’t look at me.

Grant worked the room like a man on top of the world. He introduced me as “my wife, Nora” eleven times. I counted. Every time, something in my chest went ping, like a wire snapping.

At 7:45 | excused myself and went to the lobby.

Mara was standing by the coat check in a black dress, holding Poppy on her hip. Poppy had a bow in her curls and she was chewing on a rabbit’s ear, and when she saw me she buried her face in her mother’s neck.

Mara looked like she might be sick. “I can’t.”

“You can.”

“Nora, she’s three-”

“And in five years she’ll be eight, and she’ll still be his daughter, and he’ll still be a man who told four hundred people she doesn’t exist.” I put my hand on her arm. “You don’t have to say a word. That’s my job. Just stand

where people can see you.”

At 8:05 the managing partner, Douglas Bright, took the stage to announce the new class of partners.

I slipped into my seat next to Grant. He squeezed my hand.

Doug did the whole speech. Legacy, integrity, family- the firm was, he said, a family.

“And it gives me particular pleasure,” he said, “to introduce a man who has given this firm eleven years of exceptional service, and who I’m proud to say embodies everything-”

His phone lit up on the podium. He glanced down.

I know exactly what he was looking at, because Renata had sent it at 8:04 – the certificate, the deed, the/’. forged signature, and a one-page cover letter, cc’d to the firm’s general counsel and its ethics committee

Doug stopped talking.

The room did that thing rooms do when something’s wrong. A ripple. Four hundred people leaning forward.

Grant’s hand tightened on mine.

Doug looked up. “I’m sorry – could you excuse me one moment.”

And I stood up.

I don’t remember deciding to. I remember my chair scraping and the sound carrying, and every face at our table turning, and Grant hissing “Nora – what are you-”

I walked to the stage. Doug, God bless him, stepped back and let me have the microphone, because he’d read enough of that email in eleven seconds to know he wanted no part of what came next.

I looked out at four hundred people.

“Good evening,” I said. “For those who don’t know me, I’m Nora Whitaker. Grant’s wife.”

Silence.

“I want to tell you something about the man you’re about to make partner, and then I promise I’ll let you all get back to your salmon.”

Somebody laughed nervously. It died fast.

“Six years ago, at my engagement party, my husband started an affair with my maid of honor. Three years ago they had a daughter. Fourteen months ago, while married to me, he legally married her in South Carolina – which is a felony called bigamy.” I lifted the folder. “To pay for their house, he forged my signature on a deed to my late grandmother’s home and sold it out from under me. He forged my name again on a hundred-and-sixty-thousand-dollar loan. I have the documents. So does the sheriff’s financial crimes unit, and so does your ethics committee, as of four minutes ago.”

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed.

Grant was standing at our table, absolutely white, and he said my name – “Nora” – the way you’d say it to a dog going into traffic.

“And so this room understands,” I said, “that this isn’t a rumor-”

I looked toward the back.

The doors opened.