I Caught Him in the President's Office, So I Painted My Own Name novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cake
On her tenth anniversary Stephanie carries a cake into the clubhouse and finds her husband with the president's daughter in the president's office, then learns her joint account is empty.
On our tenth anniversary I carried a cake through the back door of my husband's motorcycle club.
Four patches were shooting pool in the main room, and all four stopped.
I had the bakery box in both hands and snow melting off my boots.
The vanilla cake had one candle and a tiny piped wrench, because Kendra had told me where to order it.
"Ten years, Stephanie," she'd said last week, hugging me at the bar. "Go all out. He's lucky to have you."
My husband had texted at noon: Stuck at the supplier, don't wait up. We'll do it right tomorrow. Love you.
I had read that text twice in the bakery line, and it had felt too smooth both times.
So I drove out to the clubhouse instead of going home.
The prospect by the pool table stood up fast. "He's not here, Stephanie. He's in Boise, remember?"
"His truck is outside."
"Somebody borrowed it."
I looked at the four of them, and none of them looked back at me.
I started down the hall.
"Stephanie, wait," the prospect said, and then another patch said, "Let her go," quietly.
The door at the end of the hall was Norman Mabry's office.
Norman Mabry, the club president, had gone to his cabin on the lake until Monday. Everyone knew that.
Dutch had a key to the office, because Dutch had a key to everything that mattered.
I pushed the door open with my shoulder.
My husband was on the leather couch with his shirt off and his jeans open.
Kendra sat on his lap wearing his club cut and nothing else.
The cut was the one I had patched at the shoulder in October.
She was holding her phone out at arm's length, and it was pointed at the door.
At me.
The smell hit me next. It was my perfume, the dark larkspur one that I'd had to order online because nobody in Pine Fork sold it.
Kendra had asked what it was at the summer party, and I'd told her, and she had said, "I love it."
She had worn it to every party since.
"Happy anniversary," she said, smiling.
Dutch didn't jump up. He sighed and put one hand over his eyes.
"Steph, please. Let's talk about this somewhere that isn't in front of the club."
"How long?" I said.
"Since spring," Kendra said, and she giggled, and the phone didn't move.
Behind me the hall had filled up. I could hear boots and the creak of the floor and nobody breathing out loud.
Half of them had known.
I could tell from how nobody asked me what was wrong.
I stepped inside and set the cake on Norman's desk.
Behind the desk was the shelf where Norman kept his trophies, and on it, alone, sat the old chrome fuel tank I'd painted my first winter in the garage.
A wrench crossed with a wing, and two letters in gold leaf: R.C.
A customer had ordered it and never come back for it. Norman wouldn't let anyone mount it on a bike.
I looked at it for a second, because it was the only thing in the room that was honest.
"Light the candle," I told Kendra. "You've got the lighter."
She stopped smiling.
"Every tank in that lot has my paint on it," I said to my husband. "Ten years of it. Remember who you took it from."
"Oh, come on," Dutch said. "It's a garage, Steph. Don't make it a whole thing."
The whole hall heard him.
Nobody said a word to me, not one patch, not the woman who ran the bar who had eaten at my table every Thanksgiving.
I pulled my wedding ring off and put it down next to the cake.
So I turned around and walked out through all of them.
I made it as far as the truck before my hands started shaking.
Then I drove to the garage on Route 21 to get my rigs and sit somewhere I could think.
The key wouldn't turn in the lock.
A red light blinked on the new keypad by the door, and the code I'd used every morning for ten years did nothing.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder. It was the bank.
I opened the app with a thumb that felt numb.
Our joint account, the one every paint check had gone into for ten years, said $0.00.
Under it, one line: Transfer out, 3:14 p.m., to an account ending in 7731.
At 3:14 I had been standing in the bakery, picking out a candle.
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