I Was His Wife, She Was His Everything novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Back Room
On her first night pouring drinks at a creekside oyster bar, three months pregnant Rue hears her husband complain that three million a month isn't enough for her, slaps him in front of his card game and drops her ring in his whiskey, and then his dead first wife's name turns up on her spending account.
The first thing Sallie asked me was whether I could lift a full keg.
The second thing was how far along I was.
"Twelve weeks," I said. "And yes."
She looked at my stomach, then at my hands.
"Fourteen an hour plus tips, sugar. Don't drop my glasses."
That was four o'clock on a Thursday.
By nine I had poured two hundred beers, and nobody had asked me whose wife I was.
Sallie's sat on old pilings over Shem Creek.
The floor tilted toward the water, and the shrimp boats bumped the dock all night.
I liked it better than any room I'd stood in for two years.
My phone buzzed against my hip.
The household card had declined my prenatal vitamins at the drugstore that morning.
Now it wanted me to know my balance.
Eleven dollars and forty cents, out of a monthly limit of five hundred.
I put the phone away and smiled at the next man in line.
Sallie came by with a tray.
"Back room wants a bucket of beer and the good bourbon. Thursday card game. Big tippers, bigger mouths."
I carried it down the hall.
The door was cracked open, and cigar smoke came through the gap.
Then a voice I knew better than my own.
"Is three million a month really not enough for one woman?"
I stopped with my hand flat on the door.
My husband was supposed to be in Asheville until Saturday.
Through the gap I could see Lawton on the old leather couch, turning a lighter over in his fingers.
His sleeves were rolled up and his boots were on the card table.
Clancy Mims nearly knocked his chair over.
"Three million? A month? What's Rue doing, buying racehorses?"
He laughed and looked around the table.
"Don't tell me she's got some other guy on the side."
Nobody laughed with him.
Lawton's jaw went tight.
"She told the office last night she was short. So I sent another five hundred thousand."
He threw his cards face down.
"This morning her lawyer sent me divorce papers. Said if I can't support her properly, I shouldn't bother."
I looked down at my apron.
At the small hard curve under it that nobody but my doctor had seen.
I had paid that doctor in cash.
Out of tips.
I pushed the door open with the tray.
Six men looked up at once.
Lawton's face went blank.
"Rue?"
I set the tray on the card table very carefully.
Then I slapped him.
The crack bounced off the wood paneling.
Clancy's beer stopped halfway to his mouth.
"How many wives do you have, Lawton?"
He touched his cheek and stared at me.
"One," he said quietly. "Just the one."
"Then tell me why I get five hundred dollars a month."
The room went silent.
I took out my phone and opened the card app and turned the screen to the table.
Monthly limit, five hundred. Available, eleven dollars and forty cents.
"That's the household card your office gave me two years ago. That's my whole allowance. It's never changed."
One of the card players whistled low.
Lawton took the phone out of my hand.
He read it twice.
Then his eyes dropped to my apron, and lower.
The black T-shirt Sallie gave me was tight across my middle.
I watched him see it.
"Rue." His voice cracked on my name. "Are you pregnant?"
"Twelve weeks. I called you nine times to tell you in person. Every time, Libba said you'd call back."
"Nobody told me you called."
"I'm telling you now."
He stood up so fast the table rocked and a beer bottle went over.
"Get your bag. We're going home, and we're figuring this out tonight."
"No."
He blinked.
Maybe he hadn't, not from me.
"I didn't send you any divorce papers. I've never hired a lawyer in my life. I didn't ask your office for a dime last night."
I picked his glass of bourbon up off the table.
"And I'm not going home to a man who'd believe I did any of it."
I twisted my wedding ring off.
It came easily.
I'd lost weight this summer, eating cheap.
I dropped it in his whiskey.
It hit the bottom of the glass with a small, clean click.
I put the glass back in his hand.
"My shift ends at two," I said. "After that I'll be sleeping somewhere you don't own."
I picked up the empty tray and walked out.
Nobody behind me said a word.
Back at the bar, Sallie looked at my bare hand and then at my face.
She slid a glass of ice water across to me.
"Who am I about to ban, sugar?"
"My husband."
"Huh. Good tipper?"
"Not to me."
She snorted and went back to her oysters.
I drank the water and poured three more beers with my hands shaking.
The fourth one I spilled.
Every October, Lawton stood up at a gala and talked about his first wife.
Mariel Kershaw, lost off his sailboat in a squall six years ago.
There was a bench with her name on it at the Battery.
Last year I had sat in the front row while he called her his everything.
I clapped with everybody else.
I'd thought that was the worst night of my marriage.
Boots came fast down the hall.
Clancy got to the bar first, holding Lawton's phone out in front of him.
Lawton was right behind him.
His face was the color of the oyster shells in the bucket.
"Rue," Clancy said. "You need to see this."
"I pulled up the household account," Lawton said. "The one the three million goes into."
"It's not your card on it," Clancy said. "It's somebody else's."
He turned the screen toward me.
The last charge was forty minutes old.
Four hundred and twelve dollars, at a marina bar in Nassau, Bahamas.
Under it was the name of the cardholder.
MARIEL H. KERSHAW.
I looked up at my husband.
He was holding on to the edge of Sallie's bar with both hands.
"That's my wife's card," he said. "Mariel's. She's been dead six years."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend