My Husband Sold Our Perfect Marriage on Tour, So I Ended It on Stage novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fourteen Twelve

The stagehand takes me to a hotel corridor where I film the woman in my husband's shirt, then I find the email that cuts me out after Chicago.

Jack did not take me to the door.

He took me to an alcove by the ice machine on the fourteenth floor, where a laundry cart blocked the view from the hall.

"Stay behind the cart," he said. "She leaves it unlatched. She thinks nobody walks this way."

I had changed out of the wrap dress in the car.

I wore Brendan's gray sweatshirt and flat shoes, and I had told the driver I was too tired for the after-party.

Brendan had kissed my forehead in the lobby and said, "Go rest, my love."

Then he had gone to the bar to hold court.

He would be fifteen minutes.

He was always fifteen minutes, I realized.

I had never once asked what he did with the rest.

"I'm going to film this," I said.

"Use mine," Jack said. He pushed his phone into my hand. "It's got a better lens. And yours is synced to his."

I looked up at him.

"You thought of that?"

"I've had three cities to think," he said.

We waited ten minutes, watching the ice machine's little digital clock tick over.

Then the door of 1412 swung open and a small woman in a black slip dress leaned out into the hall.

Platinum hair, cut sharp at the chin.

Red lipstick, still perfect.

Tallis Crane, the tour's publicist.

The woman who had brought me tea backstage in Cincinnati and called me "the heart of this whole thing."

She looked both ways.

Then she stepped back inside, and I saw what she was wearing under the slip.

Brendan's cufflinks lay on the carpet outside her door.

I knew them.

I had given them to him on our fifth anniversary.

The door opened again.

My husband stepped into the hall in his shirtsleeves with his tie in his hand.

He bent, picked up the cufflinks, and kissed Tallis on the mouth.

It was not a quick kiss.

It lasted the length of a verse of a song.

"Same time in Pittsburgh," he said.

"Same time in Pittsburgh," she answered. "Tell her you love her."

"I always do," he said, and she laughed.

I filmed all of it.

My hands did not shake once.

That is the part I remember best.

I felt as steady as a table.

When Brendan walked toward the elevators, Jack caught my elbow and pulled me deeper behind the cart.

My husband passed within six feet of us, whistling the tune from our wedding.

The elevator dinged, and he was gone.

I stood there with the phone in my fist.

"I'm sorry," Jack said quietly.

"Why?"

"Nobody should see that from a laundry cart."

I laughed once, a short ugly laugh.

"I've seen worse from a lectern," I said. "Take me back to my room. I need to be in bed before he is."

"I'll walk you."

"No." I handed him his phone. "Send me the video. Then delete the one on yours, and forget which floor you stood on."

His mouth moved, a little.

"I don't forget floors," he said.

I made it to our suite on the ninth floor with six minutes to spare.

I got into bed in the sweatshirt and turned off the lamp.

Brendan came in at one o'clock, smelling like the bar.

He sat on his side of the mattress and took off his shoes the way he always did, one at a time, with a small sigh.

"Asleep?" he whispered.

I breathed slow.

He leaned over and kissed my hair.

"I love you, Roz," he said. "You're the best thing I ever did."

Then he went into the bathroom and ran the shower for twenty minutes.

I lay with my eyes open and listened to him wash her off.

When the bathroom door shut, I slid his iPad out of the nightstand drawer.

It was the one he used for the tour schedule.

It was signed into his work email.

I had set it up myself, in the spring, because he kept forgetting his password.

I did not need his password.

I scrolled up and up through the sponsor notes and the interview requests.

Then I saw a thread called "Chicago. Private."

It was from him to a lawyer I had never met.

I read it twice.

"After the finale, move Roz off the Devoted Media LLC filing. Quiet and clean. Announce Tallis as incoming partner in the new year. Roz stays 'the heart of the brand' on paper. No money, no vote."

The reply was one line.

"Understood. She won't see it coming."

I put the iPad back in the drawer.

My chest felt like a held breath.

Devoted Media was half mine.

My grandmother's four hundred thousand dollars had built it, in a lawyer's office with my signature on every page.

Every word of the book had come out of my hands.

I had made him the most devoted husband in America.

And he planned to hand my place to a woman in a slip dress.

The shower shut off.

I lay down, closed my eyes, and arranged my face.

There were thirty days until Chicago.

I would be the best wife he had ever had.

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