My Husband Called Me His Mistress on Livestream novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Flowers for 2301
A stranger slaps Leigh on a livestream in her own apartment, wearing her husband's ring, and tips red paint over her head as the elevator chimes.
A stranger slapped me in my own front hall on a Tuesday afternoon, and three hundred thousand people watched it happen live.
She had come to my door with a bouquet of yellow roses.
"Delivery for twenty-three oh one," she had said, smiling.
So I opened the door.
Now she stood in my foyer with a phone held up by a friend, and her palm was still red.
"That's her," she told the lens. "That's the homewrecker sleeping with my husband."
Her husband.
She raised her left hand so the camera could see her ring.
It was a plain gold band with a nick in the edge, jammed onto her thumb because it was too big for her.
I knew that nick. I had made it.
On our honeymoon in Maine, I dropped Brent's ring on a bathroom tile, and he laughed and said now it was one of a kind.
Three months ago he told me he had lost it at the gym.
"You have the wrong apartment," I said. My cheek burned.
"Do I?" She turned her phone toward me. "Read this."
It was a text thread. My texts.
Are you eating at home tonight? I made the soup you like. Miss you already. Don't judge me, I bought another ugly vase.
The contact name at the top said Rick (Pipes).
That was me. My husband had saved his wife in his phone as a plumber.
Behind her, five people in black hoodies shoved into my home.
One held a ring light. One held a banner that said HOMEWRECKER HUNTERS.
Comments ran up the screen too fast to read. Hearts. Little gold coins.
"Say hi to the side piece, everybody," said the redhead holding the ring light.
"I'm Shelby," the woman told the lens. She dropped the roses on my floor. "And this is the girl who's been spending my husband's money."
She looked about thirty, in a cream coat, with a blond bob cut sharp at the chin.
The comments were already deciding who I was.
They said guilty. They said she knew he was married. They said drag her.
The redhead swung the camera across my living room.
She filmed the silk rug and the glass case that held my grandmother's music boxes.
"Look at this place," Shelby said. "Twenty-third floor. Somebody's husband paid for every inch."
Twenty-third floor.
The garage elevator stopped at 23 only for a key card, and only two cards existed for 2301.
Mine was in my purse, on the hook by the door. I could see it from where I stood.
The other one was Brent's.
So Shelby had come up on his card.
My husband was a careful man. He kept receipts. He labeled his cables.
He kept our marriage certificate in a bank vault, because originals never leave the bank, and he had filled in every line of our license himself before he handed me the pen for my signature.
He did not lose things. Not rings. Not keys. Not me.
I could have ended it right there with one call to my father's lawyers.
But I did not want lawyers to tell these people who I was.
I wanted Brent to do it.
So I wiped my mouth, picked my phone up off the marble, and called him.
He let it ring twice. Then he declined.
Two seconds later, the phone in Shelby's hand lit up.
The screen said Husband, with a heart.
She did not put it to her ear. She held it up to the ring light and hit speaker.
"Babe," she said. "Guess where I am."
For a moment there was only traffic. A horn. His turn signal ticking.
Then my husband's voice filled my living room.
"Shelby. Don't touch anything. I'm coming up."
The line went dead.
He did not say babe. He did not say her name softly, the way he said mine in the mornings.
He sounded the way he did on work calls when a deal was going bad. Short. Flat.
He's coming, I thought. He'll walk in and end this.
I wanted to believe it so badly that my hands stopped shaking.
"You heard him, everybody," the redhead told the lens. "Husband's on his way. Don't go anywhere."
I stood up straight in my own foyer and looked into the camera.
"My name is Leigh Pruden," I said. "I'm Brent Pruden's wife. We were married eight years ago at the Cook County Clerk's office. I signed our license myself."
The comments ran faster.
Liar. They all say that. Ma'am, you are the side piece. The audacity. Don't let her talk, Shelby.
Shelby laughed. It was a pretty laugh, and she had practiced it.
"His wife?" She dug into her bag. "Then what's this?"
She pulled out a folded paper and opened it for half a second.
A marriage certificate. A gold seal. The words Cook County across the top. Brent's name in his own blocky print.
She snapped it shut before I could read the dates.
"I'm his legal wife," she said. "Which means everything in this apartment is marital property. Which means it's mine."
She leaned close. Her perfume was the bottle Brent had bought me two Christmases ago.
"You can stop pretending," she said. "Nobody here believes you."
My own certificate sat in a vault downtown.
I pointed at the small black dome in the ceiling.
"Every room in this apartment records," I said. "You might want to think about that."
"Ooh," the redhead said to her viewers. "She's threatening us now."
Shelby looked up at the camera and smiled at it.
"Good," she said. "Then let's give it something to record."
A man in a hoodie passed her a can from his tote bag. The lid was already off.
It was red paint.
She tipped it over my head.
It ran into my eyes and down my collar and onto the marble.
I did not step back. I did not wipe my face.
Down the hall, the elevator chimed on my floor.
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