Chapter 22: Her Name

"Her name is Tamara Lowell," Stanley said.

The words rang through all four speakers, and nobody in the room reacted.

Three hundred faces looked at him, polite and blank.

"Ten years ago a waitress spilled coffee in my lap," he said. "I married her."

He didn't look away from them.

"She was twenty-one, and she thought I was the best thing that ever happened to her."

A man in the back coughed.

"I was using her. I told her I loved her every night for ten years.

"For eight of them it was true, and I never told her so.

"At our anniversary party I said the opposite, into a microphone, to the woman beside me."

He turned and looked at Lydia.

"She took off her ring in front of a hundred and twenty people. At midnight you all forgot she had ever existed."

"Stanley, sit down," said the chairman.

"You were at the party, sir. You shook her hand. You told her the salmon was excellent."

The chairman frowned, and shook his head.

"I'd remember."

"She's allergic to pine nuts," Stanley said. "She takes one sugar in her coffee and not two."

His voice was steady.

"She hums when a kettle boils, and she hates being told she looks tired."

At the third table, one of the cousins slowly set down her fork.

"The pine nuts," she said.

"Yes."

"I heard you say that to the caterer." She pressed her fingers against her mouth.

"I laughed. I said you knew her better than she knew herself. Who..."

"Her name," Stanley said.

"I can't..."

"Tamara," said the cousin beside her, slowly. "Her name is Tamara. She wore a blue dress."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Pretended to Love Me from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.