My Marriage Was Their Bet novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Four A.M.

Bancroft arrives at dawn with three wives and a camera to take his unwell wife home, and Daphne refuses on the street, so he freezes the joint account that carries her payroll; Kitty arrives with a list of nine names in Samson's handwriting.

Samson leaned across the passenger seat and pushed the door open.

I got in.

He did not ask where I wanted to go.

He drove to Fenner Street, where Bea and I had run our catering kitchen for six years, and parked under her window.

"What did you hear?" he said.

"That my marriage was a bet."

His hands stayed on the wheel.

"Did you know?" I said.

"Not tonight," Samson said. "Ask me when you've slept."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

I got out and slammed the door, and he waited at the curb until Bea's light came on.

Bea opened her door in a bathrobe and took one look at me.

She did not say a single word.

She put the kettle on, found a pair of her socks and sat across from me at the steel prep table.

I told her everything, from the red dress to the ring in the wine.

When I got to the dress, Bea put down her mug.

"He made you dress her."

"Yes."

"And you did it."

"Yes," I said. "And then I left."

Bea reached over and took my hand with both of hers.

"I've wanted to throw something at that man since your wedding," she said. "I didn't, because you loved him."

"I did."

"Do you now?"

I looked at my bare left hand.

"Ask me tomorrow."

My phone had thirty-one missed calls.

Every one of them was Bancroft.

The texts were the same ones I had read nine times before. Come home. I'm sorry. I'll fix it. I can't breathe without you.

At four in the morning, the last one came in.

I'll make it right. Just open the door.

I turned the phone face down on the steel.

At seven, a car horn sounded out on Fenner Street.

Then a second horn.

Bea went to the window and swore.

"Daph. He brought an audience."

Bancroft stood on the sidewalk in a fresh blue suit with a huge bouquet of white roses.

Three of the wives from the dinner stood behind him in their coats, and the oldest held a phone up to film.

Neighbors had come out onto their stoops.

I walked downstairs and opened the street door.

"Daphne," Bancroft said, loud enough for the whole block. "Honey. You're not well. You haven't slept. Let me take you home."

"I'm fine."

"You threw your ring in my wine." His eyes were wet already. He was good at that. "That's not you, baby."

The wife with the phone said gently, "We're all so worried."

I looked at her.

She had eaten at my table for six years, and I had cooked every meal.

"You were at the dinner," I said to her. "You heard what he told me to do."

She looked at her shoes.

"He told me to give a stranger my wedding dress," I said to the street. "In front of twelve people, as a joke. And all twelve of you laughed."

A man across the road lowered his coffee.

Bancroft's smile did not move.

"She's overtired," he told the wives. "She doesn't mean it."

"I mean every word."

He stepped closer and lowered his voice, so the phone would not catch it.

"Come home now, Daph, and I'll forget it. Walk away, and I'll make you regret it."

I held out my hand for the roses.

He gave them to me, relieved.

I walked over and dropped them in the neighbor's recycling bin.

"Get off my sidewalk," I said.

Bancroft's face went still.

Then he smiled again, wide and warm, for the benefit of the phone.

"Okay, honey," he said. "Take all the time you need. But the accounts are in my name too, and I'm worried about your judgment right now."

He got into his car.

Upstairs, Bea's phone buzzed on the prep table, and she picked it up and read it twice.

"Payroll didn't go through," she said. "The joint account is frozen."

My catering company ran its payroll out of that account.

Eight people were due to be paid on Friday.

"He did that from the car," I said. "While I was still standing there."

"Daphne."

"I know."

Someone knocked on the back door, soft and fast.

Bea opened it a few inches.

Kitty stood on the fire stairs in my wedding dress, with a man's gray coat over it and one pinned hem dragging on the metal.

Her eyeliner had run down both cheeks.

"Samson put me in a cab," she said. "He gave me your address and said you'd let me in."

I stepped aside.

Kitty came in shaking and held out a folded sheet of paper.

It was a list of nine women's names, each with a phone number.

I knew the handwriting.

It was the same neat slant that had signed our wedding card.

"He said you'd know what to do with them," Kitty said.

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