A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Dinner

Darcy waited until the salads were cleared.

Then she tapped the microphone twice, stood up in a red dress, and thanked everyone for coming.

I sat at table four between my husband and Hugh, with a very large purse on the chair beside me.

Bridget's chair, table four, stayed empty.

She was still on the road with the corsage and the lady from the Lodge.

The purse held the speaker.

"I want to start tonight with a game," Darcy said. "We've all got a story we've never told. Some of us have told it anyway."

Laughter, from the sofa women near the front.

"Here's one I know is true," she said. "Because I have it on tape."

She pressed a button on her phone, and the ballroom speakers crackled.

Tom's voice filled the room, thick with drink.

"I never gave her what she wanted. She never asked me for it. I didn't know how to find it without being asked, so I just..."

Silence.

Every head at table one had turned toward Tom.

His principal looked at his plate.

The president of the school board wrote something on a napkin.

Darcy let it hang.

"That's a man talking about his wife," she said, "to a woman he was about to share a bed with. And here he is tonight. With both of them."

She pointed at us, a long red nail.

"Isn't that the funniest thing you ever heard?"

A few women laughed.

Most didn't.

I stood up.

"May I?" I said.

"Oh, please." Darcy swept a hand at the stage steps. "It's your marriage."

I walked up the aisle in the green dress.

I took the microphone from her stand, and my hand did not shake.

"I'd like to finish that sentence," I said. "Since it was cut off."

"There is no more."

"There is. The next sentence was: 'So I just waited, and if she ever wanted Hugh, I wouldn't stand in the way.'" I looked out at the tables. "She cut it because it made him sound decent, and she wanted you to laugh."

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