Backstabbing Friend's Self-Inflicted Shame novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Surprised?
Mid-toast at her company's anniversary dinner, Greer sees Valeria's photo of Tate asleep in the bed she bought appear on the ballroom screen, leaves it up, and answers Valeria in front of two hundred people; Tate calls and tells her not to go to her father's office.
The photo reached the ballroom screen while I was thanking two hundred people for forty years of Haldane Home.
I was standing at the podium in the Amway Grand with a glass of champagne in my hand.
My phone was cabled to the projector so the slideshow would run from it.
I had forgotten that the cable carried everything the phone did.
The room saw it before I did.
First the dealers at table four stopped clapping, and then the board chair lowered his glass.
I turned around.
Forty feet of white screen showed my husband asleep on his back, one arm thrown over his head, his wedding ring on.
He lay in a walnut bed with a sage-green wool comforter pulled to his chest.
I knew the bed because I had bought it in July.
I knew the comforter because I had spent an hour in a showroom choosing that exact green.
Under the picture a message sat in a grey bubble.
Valeria Harmon: [Surprised?]
Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.
Only a minute before, I had been telling them about the day my father hung our first sign.
Just before that, I had been telling them what I owed to the friend who wasn't here.
"Valeria wrote the slogan on your napkins, and last night she stayed until two to fold the programs herself," I had said. "And I owe my marriage to her," I had added, to a lot of warm laughter. "She dragged me to a birthday party seven years ago and sat me next to Tate. I didn't want to go."
Her chair at the head table was empty, with a place card and a folded napkin.
She had texted at six: Sick as a dog, so sorry, drink one for me and tell everyone the napkins are my love letter.
Tate's chair was empty too.
He had texted at seven: Stuck in Dallas with the supplier, landing late. Knock them dead, honey.
I looked at the picture again.
Three weeks ago I had started to wonder where Tate went on his nights in Dallas.
I had told no one, and I had not been sure.
Now I was sure, and Valeria had even sent me the address, because there was only one apartment in the city with that bed in it.
A cold smile came across my face.
I could feel it, and I did not stop it.
I had two choices.
I could cut the cable, laugh it off and let two hundred people decide for themselves what they had seen.
Or I could let them see all of it.
So I left it up.
"Please keep your seats," I said into the microphone. "That's not part of the program."
A woman near the front covered her mouth.
At the back of the room a phone came up, and then another.
I lifted my own phone off the lectern and typed with the whole ballroom watching the words appear on the screen.
Very. Thank you for the address.
The message went into the grey bubble under hers.
Somebody at the dealers' table said, "Oh my God," quite softly.
I put the phone down.
"Valeria Harmon runs our brand," I said. "She's the one who gave us the slogan on your napkins."
I let them look at their napkins.
"She's home sick tonight. Apparently my husband is nursing her."
Nobody laughed.
A man by the door was already walking out with his phone to his ear.
"I want to thank you for forty years," I said. "My father would have been glad to see every one of you here. I'm sorry he isn't, tonight in particular."
I raised my glass.
"To Haldane Home," I said. "And to the people who actually built it."
They drank.
Most of them did not know what they were drinking to, and they drank anyway.
I left the stage through the kitchen corridor, past the plated dessert, and my phone started ringing before I reached the loading dock.
Tate's name came up on the screen with the photograph I had chosen for it, the two of us in Door County, squinting at the sun.
I answered.
"Greer, honey." His voice was low and steady. "Listen to me. I know what you think you saw."
"I saw you in a bed."
"I fell asleep on her couch and she moved me. She was locked out of her own place. It's a stupid, stupid thing."
"You're in Dallas."
"I'm sorry I lied about that. We'll talk at home."
He did not ask what I had done with the photo or who had seen it.
He did not ask if I was crying.
"Where are you right now?" he said.
"Standing outside."
"Go home. Please. And whatever else you do tonight, do not go to your father's office."
I stood very still on the loading dock in the cold.
In six years of marriage Tate had never once told me where I could not go.
I hung up and asked the valet for my car.
Then I drove to my father's office.
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