His 47 Seconds of Silence Cost Him Everything novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Forty-Seven Seconds
His ex-wife holds up a positive pregnancy test at the boys' fundraiser and my husband says nothing for forty-seven seconds, so I take off my ring, and then they call it a joke.
I took off my wedding ring at the forty-seventh second of my husband's silence.
His ex-wife had just told a whole ballpark that she was carrying his baby.
It was the Wildcats' Home Run Derby and Bake Sale, a Saturday in April.
I'd bought a new white sundress for it.
I'd bought a navy Wildcats cardigan to go over it, so I'd match the boys.
I was selling brownies at the concession window, three for five dollars, and I had made all of them.
Five years I'd been Callen's stepmother.
I still thought that if I baked enough and smiled enough, the Ritters would stop calling me Cory's wife and start calling me family.
Then Stacy walked up to the window.
Her cameraman walked behind her, the way he always did, a little camera on a stick held at his chest.
Stacy had her honey-blond hair blown out and a white smile on.
She didn't buy a brownie.
She held up a pregnancy test instead, turned so I could read it.
Two pink lines.
"The baby's Cory's," she said, loud enough for the line behind her. "Isn't that wonderful? You're going to be happy for us, right, sweetie?"
I didn't say anything.
I looked past her at Cory.
He was standing by the grill with a paper plate in his hand.
He knew me.
He knew that if he said anything, if he said no, I would believe him over her and over the pink lines and over my own eyes.
He didn't say it.
I started counting without meaning to.
One. Two. Three.
The line at the window went quiet, then it started whispering.
A mom I knew from the team looked at my left hand.
Somebody in the bleachers lifted a phone.
Then another somebody.
Stacy stood there smiling at me.
And Cory just waited.
He was waiting for me to cry.
He was waiting for me to throw something, or scream, or fall apart in front of all these people.
For the first few seconds, I made excuses for him.
He was shocked. He was choosing his words.
At twenty, I thought about Tuesdays.
Every Tuesday night since Christmas he'd had a late showing.
He'd come home after eleven smelling like somebody else's laundry soap.
At thirty, I looked at the dugout.
Callen was in there in his catcher's gear, mask pushed up on his head, frozen with a sunflower seed halfway to his mouth.
At forty, I couldn't remember why I'd ever thought I had a right to stand at this window.
At forty-seven, I took off my ring.
I closed it in my fist and turned around to leave.
Behind me, Stacy burst out laughing.
She laughed so hard she had to grab the counter, bent over, wheezing.
And finally, my husband said something.
"Ren. Relax. It was a joke."
The cameraman swung around and pointed the lens at my face.
Stacy straightened up and wiped her eyes and smiled right into it.
"Welcome to the very first episode of Bonus Mom Test!" she said. "We wanted to see what she'd do if I told her I was pregnant by her husband!"
That was when I understood.
His silence hadn't been a man caught out.
It had been worse.
He had stood there and watched me come apart, second by second, so their video would be better.
Cory walked over and put his arm around Stacy's shoulders.
He looked at the camera and not at me.
"See?" he said. "You really do care about me."
Some of the parents laughed, the uneasy kind.
I didn't feel angry yet.
I felt like the ground had been pulled out and I was still standing on the air.
Cory's mother came hurrying down from the bleachers in her church pearls.
"Renee, honey, smile," she said. "Don't ruin the boys' day over a little joke."
"It's for family harmony," Stacy said. "Right? We're all family here."
"You're being too sensitive, babe," Cory said. "Everybody's watching. Just laugh."
Before, I would have.
I would have laughed and said, you got me.
I would have explained myself all the way home and apologized at dinner for being a bad sport.
I looked at the camera.
"It wasn't funny," I said.
That was all I said.
Over by the grill, the head coach took off his gray cap and walked straight at the cameraman.
"Get that thing off my field," he said. "These are twelve-year-olds."
I walked to my car with the ring biting into my palm.
I sat behind the wheel and found the card I'd saved two years ago, from a teacher at school who'd needed a divorce attorney.
I typed with my thumb.
"My name is Renee Ritter. I need to file for divorce. As soon as you can see me."
I hit send.
Cory thought I'd smooth it over by supper, the way I always did.
He didn't know that forty-seven counts in, I took off my ring.
By forty-eight, I'd decided he was going to be my ex-husband.
I drove home to Maple Glen Court and sat at the kitchen island.
Less than two hours later, my phone started buzzing.
The video was in the Wildcats parents' group chat.
Then the elementary school moms' chat.
Then the Westerville Neighbors page, with eleven thousand members.
Stacy had cut it.
It started with my face going white.
It showed my hand pulling the ring off.
It showed me turning away.
Cory's forty-seven-second silence was gone.
He wasn't in it at all.
The caption said, "Bonus Mom FAILS the test LOL"
There were nine hundred laughing faces under it.
The garage door rumbled.
Cory came in through the mudroom, laughing at something on his phone.
He saw me and stopped laughing.
"Okay," he said. "Okay, it got a little bigger than we thought."
He set his keys in the bowl.
"Here's what you're going to do. You're going to post an apology tonight. Say you were in on it the whole time."
"No."
His face didn't change.
"Then you're done with Callen," he said. "You're nobody to him without me, Ren."
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