My Husband Never Took Me on Trips with His Friends. Then I Saw a Video of Him Kissing Another Woman novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Why Is Your Ring on the Table

Saturday night at Megan's, Cory finds the ring and calls. Amber messages Melina a separation agreement with Melina's signature on it, which Melina never saw. Cory is downstairs.

Megan roasted the beef herself on Saturday afternoon.

"It's a good cut," she said, and she slid it into her oven with her sleeves pushed up. "It would be a crime to waste it on those people."

I sat at her table with ginger tea and my phone face down.

At six-fifteen it buzzed against the wood.

Cory had written, "Everyone's here. Where are you?"

I read it and put the phone back.

Megan set a plate in front of me and didn't tell me to answer.

The phone rang before I picked up my fork.

I let it go to voicemail.

It rang again.

I turned the ringer off, and the screen kept lighting up with his name.

Then Cory sent another message.

"Why is your ring on the table?"

My hand stopped halfway to my mouth.

He had seen it.

I had spent the whole day picturing that moment, and it didn't feel like anything I had pictured.

Megan's phone started to ring on the counter.

She glanced at the screen.

"He's calling me."

"I don't want to talk to him."

"You won't have to." She picked it up and walked to the kitchen doorway. "Hello, Cory."

I looked at my plate and listened.

"She's safe," Megan said. "She isn't taking your calls tonight."

There was a pause long enough that I could hear his voice as a murmur.

Megan's face went hard.

"You're asking what happened? Are you serious?"

She turned her back to me.

"She saw the video. The one of you kissing Amber in front of everybody. You took another woman on that trip, and you still expected my sister to cook dinner for all of you when you got home?"

The murmur rose and fell.

"No," Megan said. "She hasn't agreed to talk to you. Don't come here."

She hung up and came back and sat beside me.

"He said it isn't what it looks like."

"It's a video, Megan."

"That's what I told him."

I pushed a carrot around my plate.

A message came in from Cory a few minutes later.

"Please give me a chance to explain the video."

I didn't answer it.

Megan took my hand and said I should try to eat something.

I ate a little of the beef. It was good.

At ten to seven, a new name lit my screen.

Amber Ketter.

I stared at it.

She had never messaged me directly before, not even to say thanks for the dinner.

I opened it with my thumb shaking.

"Cory says you saw the video. I'm sorry you found out that way."

I kept reading.

"He told me you two already worked everything out, and you'd be moved out before he got home. He said you'd both agreed. Now he says I have to keep waiting for you to calm down."

Another message came before I could answer.

"You signed the separation agreement. Are you going back on it now?"

I sat very still.

I had never talked to Cory about separating.

Two days earlier I had been choosing a paint color for a nursery I hadn't told anyone about.

I typed, "What agreement?"

Amber sent a file.

"He gave it to me himself last month. He said I should have a copy, since it concerns me too."

I opened it.

It was five pages.

My name was on the first one, next to Cory's, and the words said we had agreed to separate and make our own housing arrangements.

It was dated last month.

I scrolled to the last page.

Cory's signature was there, the long loop he made on the T.

Beside it was mine.

I enlarged it with two fingers, and my hands were shaking too much to hold it still.

The tail on the final n curled upward the way mine does.

It was my handwriting.

It was not my signature.

I had never seen that page in my life.

"Melina?" Megan leaned over my shoulder. "What did she send?"

I handed her the phone.

She read the first page, then the last, then looked up.

"Have you ever seen this?"

"No."

"Did you sign it?"

"No." My voice came out low. "I didn't even know it existed until tonight."

Amber wrote again.

"He promised that when he got home we'd finally do things the right way. I'm tired of being the excuse he keeps pushing back."

I read it twice.

Then I typed, with a hand that had almost stopped shaking, "I did not sign this, and I did not give anyone permission to sign for me."

No answer came.

I saved the file, the conversation, and the screenshots, and I sent all of it to Megan.

She was already pulling her laptop out of her bag.

"Keep the originals," she said. "Don't delete anything."

"I won't."

Down the hall, a buzzer sounded.

It was the building's front door, the long buzz that meant someone was holding the button.

Megan's head turned toward it.

My phone lit up on the table.

Cory had sent one more message.

"Melina, I'm downstairs. Open the door."

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