I Lost To His E-Cup Mistress novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Head Table
Preston's newest fling confronts Joanna at the Plaza luncheon, Joanna drops her ring in his water glass and walks out, and finds her things already packed in the lobby. Preston's video of the scene arrives, started before the woman ever stood up.
My husband loved women with big chests.
So in six years of marriage, every woman he cheated on me with was an E-cup.
Every time, Preston sent me the video.
By the second year, the gossip sites had a name for me.
The Flat Wife.
On a Thursday in April, his newest one walked up to my table at the Aldane Foundation luncheon.
There were two hundred guests in the Plaza ballroom, and a photographer from the Society page stood ten feet behind her.
I sat at the head table between my husband and his mother.
Preston had ordered the salmon for me, the way he always did.
The woman wore a green wrap dress that dipped to her ribs.
She put one hand on the back of my chair.
She pushed out her chest, and her eyes went down the front of my navy blouse and came back up.
"So you're the one who's been sitting in my seat," she said.
"I'm Cheyenne Dorsey. Preston has told me so much about you."
Her voice carried to every table.
Forks stopped.
Preston's phone lay face up beside his plate, propped against his water glass.
He didn't look at me.
He looked at his salmon.
"Preston," I said. "Do you know this woman?"
"Jo, not here."
That was an answer.
His mother dabbed her mouth with her napkin.
Constance Aldane had run the Foundation for twenty years, and she never raised her voice.
"Joanna, sit up straight. Cheyenne, dear, there's cake at the back. Let's not make this a scene."
She did not ask Cheyenne to leave.
Cheyenne smiled at me, and it was a nice smile.
"He promised he'd tell you today. I thought it would be kinder if I came in person."
My phone buzzed in my lap.
It was my sister Lacey.
"Sit tight. He loves you. Those women mean nothing. I'm coming."
Lacey was the one who always came.
Every time a video arrived, she showed up within the hour with two coffees and a clean hairbrush.
She never asked what was on my screen.
She only asked if I'd eaten.
I turned the phone over.
Cheyenne held out her hand, palm up.
"He said I could have the ring. He said it was too nice to waste on a marriage like this."
A waiter set down a cake, and she didn't even look at it.
At the back of the room, somebody laughed.
Then somebody else did.
I knew that laugh.
It was the one I had heard in every restaurant, every elevator and every comment section for six years.
All of New York had been laughing at me for so long that I had stopped hearing it.
I heard it now.
I looked at Preston.
He still hadn't lifted his eyes.
I took off my wedding ring.
It came off easily.
It had been loose for a year.
"Cheyenne," I said, loud enough for the photographer. "You should have it."
I lifted Preston's water glass and dropped the ring in.
It clinked on the bottom, right behind his phone.
"He's all yours," I said. "He'll send you a video of the next one."
The whole room went silent.
So I stepped out.
I walked down the length of the ballroom with two hundred people turning in their chairs.
Nobody stopped me.
Constance said my name once, sharp, and then she didn't say it again.
I took a cab to Fifth Avenue because my passport, my sewing kit and my grandmother's chest were in that apartment, and I wanted them before anyone could stop me.
The doorman came out from behind his desk before I reached the lobby.
He was holding his cap in both hands.
"Mrs. Aldane, I'm so sorry."
My key card beeped red against the lift.
I tried it again.
Red.
"They changed the access this morning," he said. "Mrs. Aldane the elder came at nine."
Nine.
Three hours before Cheyenne said a word to me.
Against the far wall stood six black garbage bags, tied at the top, with my winter coat sticking out of one.
Beside them was a luggage cart.
On the cart sat my grandmother's cedar chest, the one she had carried over from Ireland with her thimbles inside.
Somebody had taped a note to the lid in Constance's handwriting.
Please collect by Friday.
My phone buzzed.
It was a video, from Preston.
I pressed play, because I always did.
It showed the head table from behind his plate, steady and level, propped against the water glass.
The time stamp in the corner said 11:58.
Cheyenne didn't reach my chair until 12:07.
He had pressed record nine minutes before she ever stood up.
Under the video, he had typed one line.
Come home, Jo. This is the last one, I promise.
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