My Foolish Husband's Regret Comes Late novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Table for Twenty
Lydia sits alone at a banquet table for twenty while the manager gives her ten minutes to pay, then walks into the ballroom where her husband is toasting her absence.
I sat alone at a banquet table set for twenty.
Twenty place cards, twenty folded napkins, twenty glasses I had counted twice that afternoon.
The only guest was me, in a green dress, with a birthday cake in a box on the chair beside mine.
It was my husband's thirty-fifth birthday, and the clock on the wall said seven forty.
I had invited everyone for seven.
At six the restaurant manager had met me at the door, kissed the air beside my cheek and called me Mrs. Lowell three times in one sentence.
Now he walked into the private room with a tablet and called me nothing at all.
"Ma'am, the Lowell family office froze every card on this account at six o'clock," he said.
"The deposit cleared this morning. The room, the wine and the tasting menu for twenty are not covered."
"That's a mistake," I said. "Call the number on the account."
"I called it twice."
He turned the tablet around so I could read the total: fourteen thousand six hundred dollars.
"You have ten minutes to settle this, or I'll have security walk you out."
Behind him, in the doorway, two waiters had their phones raised.
One of them was smiling.
I looked at my own phone.
At four o'clock, Gwen Harlow, Preston's assistant, had texted me: "Hi Lydia! All set on Preston's end, he's thrilled. Don't call him, he's in board meetings all day xx"
She had added: "Twenty is such a good number, he'll love it."
I had only ever told Preston the number, so I figured he'd told her.
I had liked that text.
Not one of the twenty had come, and not one had written to say so.
At seven ten I texted three of them.
Only one answered, a cousin of Preston's: "So sorry!! Thought you knew it moved."
I didn't know what had moved.
I called Preston and got his voicemail.
I wrote: "The restaurant says my cards are frozen and nobody came to the dinner. Please call me."
His answer arrived at seven forty-four.
"Mother's event ran long. Frozen cards is a family office thing. Sort it out yourself, Lyd. About to give a speech."
I read it twice.
Nobody had ever told me Helen had an event tonight.
"Eight minutes," the manager said, and he checked his watch so I would see him do it.
He had bowed to me an hour ago.
There was a card in the zipped pocket of my bag.
It was a plain black card with a different name on it, L. Farrington, and nobody in the Lowell family had ever seen it.
My father's insurance money sat behind it, in a credit union they had never heard of.
I had kept it for the day I needed it.
I took it out and laid it on the mahogany table, and I slid it across to him.
"Run that," I said.
He looked at the name, and he looked at me.
"It's not the account holder's name, ma'am."
"It's mine."
He ran it.
The machine took a long moment and printed approved.
His whole face changed.
"Mrs. Lowell, of course, I'm so sorry for the confusion, the family office must have..."
"Add twenty percent for the staff," I said. "Except the two with their phones out."
The smiling waiter lowered his hand.
I stood up and put the strap of my bag over my shoulder.
The cake box was still on the chair, with the candle I'd bought, the number thirty-five in gold wax.
I had baked the cake myself, up at five that morning, because Preston liked my lemon cake best.
I would not sit in that room one more minute.
So I picked up the cake and walked out.
In the taxi I searched "Lowell Foundation tonight" and the first result was an event page.
Preston Lowell's Birthday Gala, seven o'clock, the Lowell Grand ballroom.
The guest list under it had twenty names.
They were the twenty I had invited.
Gwen's photo was at the top of the page, the hostess, in a silver dress.
The ride took nine minutes.
I carried the cake through the lobby of the hotel where I had worked for five years.
The doorman held open the ballroom's side door without asking me anything, because he still thought I was Mrs. Lowell.
Inside, a hundred people sat at round tables under the chandeliers.
Preston stood at the head table with a glass in his hand and his birthday ribbon on his lapel.
"I want to thank everyone for coming," he said, and his voice was warm and a little drunk. "And a toast to the one person who isn't here."
He found the camera on the stage and smiled at it.
"My wife, who is too busy to come to her husband's party."
The whole ballroom laughed.
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