He Sacrificed My Father for His First Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Three Days Late
Domenico comes home from Europe three days after Abby's father dies, and she asks him in the empty memorial hall why he gave her father's trial spot away; at midnight she watches him run to his first love, and books a divorce lawyer.
My husband walked into my father's memorial service twenty minutes late.
My father had died three days earlier, and Domenico had spent those three days abroad with Daphne.
She was his first love, and he had been with her for three months.
He stood at the back of the hall in his navy suit and didn't look at the closed casket.
I had arranged everything alone: the funeral home, the hymn my father liked, the sandwiches for twenty-two mourners.
When the service ended, Domenico stood next to me and shook hands with each of them.
He glanced at me every minute or so, and I never once looked back.
On Sunday, a few hours after my father died, Daphne had texted me.
"Mom's treatment starts Monday! Thank you for being so generous, Abby. Thinking of you. Hugs."
Generous.
Domenico caught up with me when the hall had emptied out.
"Abby, we need to talk."
"Why did you give my father's trial spot at Memorial Sloan Kettering to Daphne's mother?"
His face went still.
"Who told you about that?"
"Daphne did. She thanked me for it."
He took a breath and tugged at his tie.
"Her mother was in worse shape. I didn't know your father's window was so short. I had to pick one."
"Her mother is alive, Domenico. My father is in that box."
My voice carried through the whole empty hall, and it didn't shake.
He stepped closer.
"Can't you try to see where I was standing?"
I looked at him and couldn't find the man who had promised, seven years ago, that he would always be on my side.
He couldn't tell Daphne no.
He had told my father no without a second thought.
I stepped back from him.
"Fine. I understand. Now go."
"What about you?"
"I'm staying with my father."
His eyes went dark.
He took my wrist and walked me out to his Audi.
He put me in the passenger seat and locked the doors.
"You haven't slept in three days. We're going home."
I was too tired to fight him, so I leaned my head on the glass.
His phone lit up in the console before we reached the bridge.
It had a yellow moon for a profile picture.
"Aren't you going to answer?" I asked. "Daphne sounds worried."
He answered it.
"I know," he said into the speaker, in the softest voice I had ever heard from him. "It's not your fault. He was very sick. You don't have to apologize."
He kept that voice up for the entire drive.
From the hall to the car, he hadn't said one comforting word to me.
Daphne had sent me a photo every few days while they were away.
Paris. Rome. Amsterdam.
She was pressed against my husband in every one.
In the Rome photo, her mother sat at the café table beside them in a sun hat, laughing over a full plate of pasta.
Three months ago, at JFK, the airline told me my ticket to our long-overdue honeymoon had been cancelled a week before.
Domenico had walked Daphne through security and told me to go home and wait.
When we got back to the Tribeca apartment, he went to shower in the guest bathroom.
I showered in our bathroom and came out to find his phone on the bed, unlocked, lit with a new message.
It was from Daphne.
"Dom, I think my things got packed in your suitcase by mistake! Can you bring them down? I don't want Abby to think anything."
His open suitcase stood beside the bed.
A hairbrush was in it, and two silk camisoles, and a bottle of perfume I had never owned.
They had been laid in carefully, on top of his shirts.
Domenico came in from the guest bathroom and saw me looking.
"Abby. Don't make this into something."
"I'm not."
"Daphne has too much luggage. Some of it is just staying here until she's settled."
"Fine," I said.
He snapped the suitcase shut.
I didn't ask another question.
Some things you only need to see once.
Around midnight, thinking I was asleep, he whispered my name twice.
Then he slipped out of bed and out of the apartment.
I went to the window in time to see him cross the street.
Daphne ran to him under the streetlight and threw her arms around his neck.
He didn't push her away.
He held her up by the elbows.
A red vintage Mustang was parked at the corner behind them.
His mother had given it to him, and he had never once let me drive it.
Last month he had told me it was in the shop.
A few minutes later, Daphne posted a new story.
It was a photo of the two of them in that Mustang with the sunroof open to the night.
The caption read: "The person I love most in the world."
I stood there a long time, with my father's last voicemail still unplayed in my pocket.
Then I opened my laptop on the windowsill and booked a divorce lawyer for Friday at nine.
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