My Sister Stole My Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Last Dollar
Maeve pays off her husband's loans on their tenth anniversary and finds him in her bed with her sister; she orders them out and hears that her mother said she would be at work until six.
Maeve Prendergast paid off the last of her husband's student loans at ten past nine on the morning of their tenth anniversary.
By noon she had opened her own bedroom door and found him in her bed with her sister.
Maeve was thirty-two, a palliative care nurse in Boston.
For twelve years her job had been to sit with people through the last weeks of their lives.
Her husband, Waylon, was thirty-five and about to be made a vice president.
The MBA behind that promotion had cost eight years of her night shifts.
At the bank, she stood at the counter while the teller printed the receipt.
She had already planned the evening.
She would lay the paper on the dining table next to the fish and the wine and tell Waylon he didn't owe anyone a cent.
She folded the receipt in half and slid it into her handbag.
Her phone rang before she reached the door.
It was her mother.
"Did it go through?"
"Just now, Mom."
"Good. Good, honey. That's wonderful." Her mother's voice was warm and quick. "Don't rush home. Take the long way and buy yourself something nice."
"I'm only getting fish."
"Then get nice fish."
Maeve laughed and said she'd call later.
She had worked eleven extra night shifts so the payment would land on this exact day.
She remembered every one of them, because in September her ward had lost four patients in a row.
She hadn't needed the money.
She had done it because a last payment on a tenth anniversary was too good to waste.
At the market she bought fish, a bottle of wine and a bunch of white carnations.
Carnations are not wedding flowers, and they are not love flowers.
They are what people carry into hospital rooms.
But the night Waylon proposed, in the hospital garage at two in the morning, the gift shop's last bucket was all he could find.
He had knelt in a puddle of engine oil and held out a bunch marked half price.
They had laughed until they cried.
He promised that for the rest of his life he would give her only those ridiculous flowers.
For nine years he kept his word.
Last year he said he was too busy, so she had bought her own and said nothing.
She came home at noon, six hours early.
Two wine glasses stood unwashed on the kitchen counter.
One of them had a smear of plum lipstick on the rim, a shade Maeve could never wear because it turned her skin green.
She stood looking at the glasses for a long time.
Then she set the fish and the carnations on the counter, and she heard a laugh from the bedroom.
It was a low laugh, and she knew it before she knew why.
She opened the door.
Waylon was in her bed, and beside him, with dark hair spread across Maeve's pillow, was her sister Alexis.
Alexis's plum lipstick was on his collarbone.
Nobody spoke.
Then Waylon sat up too fast and grabbed at the blanket. "Maeve. You're home early."
Alexis pulled the sheet up to her chin.
Her eyes filled right away.
Maeve took out her phone and held it up.
She took one photo of the bed, the two of them and the open closet behind them.
The shutter sound was very loud.
"Put that down," Waylon said. "Let me explain."
"No."
Her voice came out level, and that scared her more than shouting would have.
"Maeve, please," Alexis whispered. "Don't hate me."
Maeve looked at her little sister.
She had sat up with Alexis through every breakup since high school.
She had paid Alexis's rent for three months last winter, and Alexis had cried and sworn she'd never forget it.
"Get dressed," Maeve said. "Both of you."
"It's our anniversary," Waylon said.
"I know. I paid off your loans this morning."
His mouth closed.
"They're gone, Waylon. You owe nobody a cent, and I owe you nothing at all."
She went back to the kitchen, took the carnations off the counter and picked up her handbag.
The carnations were hers, and she wasn't leaving them in this apartment.
Waylon came to the bedroom doorway with the blanket around his waist. "You can't throw me out on our anniversary."
"This apartment was my grandmother's," Maeve said. "My name is the only one on the deed."
"Maeve."
"You have until I'm back from a walk to be gone. Both of you."
So she walked out of her own home with the carnations, her phone and the receipt.
In the hallway, she heard Alexis crying behind the door.
Then she heard her sister's voice, high and shaking and perfectly clear.
"But Mom said you'd be at work until six."
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