The Anniversary Dinner He Gave to Her novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Cora's Night
Lydia reads a family group chat that says to keep her away from the anniversary dinner, goes anyway, and walks out in front of the restaurant. The owner tells her what her husband changed that morning.
My mother-in-law left her phone on my couch at 6:40 on the night of our tenth anniversary, and it lit up with my name.
I wasn't snooping.
I was picking up the pillow she'd sat on, and the screen was right there in my hand.
The group chat was called Family Table.
It had four members: my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my husband and his brother's widow.
I was not one of them.
The top message was from my husband, Neil.
"8 o'clock, the window table. Cora's night. Lydia's had a long week, let's not load her with it."
Under it, his mother had written: "She'd make it about herself. She's so petty about the lake house anyway."
She meant the one week I had asked for at the lake house, in ten years of asking for nothing.
His brother's widow, Cora, had answered with a heart.
My father-in-law had sent a thumbs up.
Aurelle was the rooftop restaurant I had wanted to see since the day it opened.
Neil had promised me the window table for our tenth.
Eight hours before, he had kissed my cheek at the door and said, "Client dinner tonight, babe. I'm sorry. Saturday, I swear."
I had said, "It's fine."
I had said that a lot of times.
Cora and Dale and Neil and I were married in the same church on the same day.
Dale drowned two years ago, and since then the date belonged to Cora.
Nobody had said that out loud. It had just become true.
I stood in my living room holding Gail's phone.
Then I put it down, put on the green dress Neil had never seen, and drove downtown.
The elevator opened on the top floor of the hotel.
The restaurant was all glass and candles, with the whole lake black and lit up behind it.
A tall man in a dark jacket stood at the host stand, writing something on a card.
He looked up at me and stopped writing.
"Good evening," he said. "Do you have a reservation?"
"No. I'm looking for the Brandwell party."
His eyes stayed on my face a second longer than they needed to.
"Window table," he said. "I'll walk you."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
He walked me anyway, and he didn't say another word.
The table was set for five.
My mother-in-law, Gail, sat at one end in her pearls.
My father-in-law sat beside her.
Cora wore black off the shoulder, with her red-gold hair pinned up, and she had her hand over her mouth.
Neil sat across from her in his good suit.
Between my father-in-law and Neil, one chair was pulled out with a place laid and a glass of red wine poured to the top.
"For Dale," my father-in-law said, and set the bottle down.
A white cake sat in the middle of the cloth with red icing across it.
Happy Anniversary.
Neil had a small velvet box in his hand.
I knew that box.
I had found it in his sock drawer three weeks ago, and I had closed the drawer and said nothing so he could surprise me.
He slid it across the cloth to Cora.
"Dale would have wanted you to have this," Neil said. "Happy anniversary, Cora."
She opened the lid and cried out.
It was the ring I had picked out in a jeweler's window in March, and then told him I didn't need.
Gail pressed a napkin to her own eye.
My father-in-law patted Cora's arm.
Nobody at that table saw me.
Two couples at the next table did.
One of the women lifted her phone.
"Happy anniversary," I said.
Neil's head came up.
His face went white, and the smile he'd been wearing for Cora stayed on it for a moment after the rest had gone.
"Lydia," he said. "I can explain."
"Client dinner," I said.
"It isn't what it looks like."
"Then it looks like you gave my dinner and my ring to your brother's wife."
"Lydia, honey," Gail said. She set her napkin down. "Sit. Don't make a scene. Cora has had a very hard night."
"I'm sure she has."
"This is exactly what I told them," Gail said to the table. "She makes everything about herself."
I reached across the cloth and took the box out of Cora's hand.
She let go without a fight.
The ring inside still had the little paper tag from the jeweler.
I took off my own wedding band.
I dropped it into Neil's champagne glass, and it sank to the bottom with a small, clear sound.
"Keep the table," I said. "It's the only thing you ever gave me that you didn't have to hide."
"Lydia, wait."
"You're petty," Gail said, loud enough for the room. "You always were."
"Yes," I said. "I'm done being anything else."
So I walked out.
I walked past the diners with their phones up, and past the candles, and I did not run.
At the elevator, a hand reached past my shoulder and held the door.
It was the man from the host stand.
He had my coat over his arm.
I had not given him my coat.
"You left it on the back of your chair," he said. "Next to the place your husband set for a dead man."
"That's not what this is."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm Hugh Ansell. I own this place."
He kept his hand on the door.
"Your husband booked that table in June, for two," he said. "This morning he called and changed it to four. He asked me to keep your name off every list and to put out a fifth place with a full glass."
The elevator chimed behind me.
"Mrs. Brandwell," Hugh said. "I thought you should know that before you go home."
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