The Mistress in the Room novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Twelve-Foot Screen
At Hannah's engagement dinner a surprise video ends on a clip of Douglas kissing a pregnant woman, and Fran takes the microphone and ends it. The man at the control table says the file was not on his list.
My husband kissed a pregnant woman on a twelve-foot screen at our daughter's engagement dinner.
Minutes earlier, he had been holding my hand under the table.
Across the ballroom, our daughter stood under an arch of white roses with her fiance.
A bridesmaid tried to set a plastic tiara on our daughter's head.
She ducked away, laughing, so her fiance put it on himself and bowed.
The whole room laughed, and my husband's thumb rubbed the back of my wedding ring.
After all our years of marriage, this was the night we had worked toward.
"Just the kids' pictures," he had told me when I asked about the screen.
His phone sat face down beside his plate.
It buzzed twice during the salad, and he glanced at it both times.
"Work," he said. "It can wait."
I patted his knee and told him to go ahead and answer it.
He said no, tonight was ours.
I believed him.
The emcee, one of Hannah's friends, stepped in front of the screen with a microphone.
"Hannah thinks we're showing a few baby pictures," she said. "The people who love her made something better."
Hannah looked straight at me. "Mom?" "Don't look at me," I said, laughing. "I know nothing."
That was true, and I was happy about it.
The lights went down.
Douglas squeezed my hand.
The screen showed Hannah at six, riding on his shoulders with ice cream down both of them.
Hannah at thirteen, standing between us before her first dance.
The three of us at her college graduation, his arm around my shoulders.
Hannah pressed her fingertips under her eyes to save her makeup.
Then Seth knelt beside Lake Michigan in the video, and whispered something that made her laugh and cry together.
The screen faded to black, and gold letters came up: FOR HANNAH AND SETH, WITH LOVE.
Somebody near me reached for a tissue.
I laid my head on Douglas's shoulder, and his cheek rested on my hair.
Then a few friends gave toasts on tape.
One of Hannah's old classmates warned Seth never to let her near a furniture store.
The room laughed again, and the screen went black.
For a moment I thought the video was over.
Then loud music crackled through the speakers, and a shaky phone recording filled the screen.
It showed people in formal clothes pouring out of a hotel ballroom, ties loose, shoes in their hands.
A date glowed in the corner: June fourteenth.
That was the weekend Douglas went to Boston for an old friend's wedding.
I had wanted to go.
He told me the guest list was only his college crowd, and I would be bored.
A voice behind the camera shouted his name.
Beside me, Douglas's hand went stiff.
On the screen he turned around with his tie pulled down, laughing in a way I had not heard in years.
Then a woman stepped into the frame.
She wore a dark green dress, and one hand rested under a belly that was clearly pregnant.
People crowded around the two of them, and somebody started a chant.
"Do it! Do it! Do it!"
She laughed and shook her head, but she did not step away.
Douglas put his arm around her waist without a second's thought.
She leaned into him before he even pulled.
In our ballroom, the laughter stopped.
On the screen, my husband bent down and kissed her stomach.
The crowd behind the camera roared.
A man's voice rose above the rest.
"Kiss the mother of your son!"
My fingers went cold inside Douglas's hand.
He straightened up.
She touched his face.
Then my husband kissed her on the mouth, and his hand slid into her hair.
Her fingers closed around his wrist and held him there while everyone clapped.
Nobody gasped.
Nobody said the word wife.
Nobody said my name.
They were happy for him.
Somewhere behind me, a glass hit the floor.
Seth was staring at the screen, then at Douglas, and the color was gone from his face.
Douglas tore his hand out of mine and shot to his feet.
"Turn it off," he said.
The man at the control table froze.
"Turn it off now!"
The screen went dark, and all I could hear was a hundred and forty people breathing.
Hannah had both hands over her mouth.
Douglas turned to me, and his face was wet.
"Fran, it's not what it looks like. Let me explain."
I stood up.
I took the microphone out of the emcee's hand, because she was too stunned to hold on.
"Nobody here has to wonder what to say to me," I told the room.
My voice shook once, and then it didn't.
"This dinner is for my daughter. It is the last thing I will share with him."
I set the microphone on the nearest table.
So I walked out.
In the hallway, the man from the control table caught up with me, white to the lips.
"Ma'am, I swear I didn't add that clip," he said. "It wasn't on the list I was given. Somebody put it in the folder."
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