Perfect Husband Act: Now My Wife's Sorry novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Chair Is Full
A year later, on the twenty-eighth of October, I walked into the restaurant ten minutes early, and my wife was already at the table.
She sat in the corner, with the candle lit in front of her, in the green dress.
The waiter who had blown out that candle with me a year ago stood beside her with a bottle of the good wine.
He saw me and stepped back.
"Happy anniversary, sir," he said, and his whole face was smiling.
"She's early," I said.
"She's been here an hour."
Audrey looked up.
She had a pink scar across each palm, and her eyes were bright, and she was biting the inside of her cheek.
"Sit," she said. "Please. I have a speech."
I sat.
The couple at the next table, who looked about sixty, stopped talking and turned in their chairs.
I did not recognize them, but I could guess.
Audrey stood up.
She was not a woman who liked to be looked at.
She stood up anyway, in the middle of a Wednesday dinner service, with every fork in the room stopped over a plate, and she put one hand flat on the tablecloth.
"Excuse me," Audrey said, to the whole room. "I'm sorry to interrupt. This is our fourth anniversary, and I owe my husband something."
Across the room, at a table by the kitchen door, Susie put her face in her hands.
Beside her, Audrey's mother gave a small, tearful nod.
Two tables over, a man in a gray suit with a cowlick, and a woman in a gray cardigan, were holding hands on the cloth.
I had not seen any of them come in.
"A year ago," Audrey said, "I left Ethan alone at this table for two hours and ten minutes. On our anniversary. With a candle."
Somebody in the room said, "Oh, no."
"I was paying a man to keep him alive, and I couldn't tell him. And then for three days he was kinder to me than anyone has ever been, and I called it an act."
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