The Night He Chose Her Over Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Don't Wait Up
Dalton leaves their anniversary dinner for Lydia, Cora crashes on the frozen Hoan Bridge and calls him, and in the ER she watches him turn her ringing phone face down.
At seven-forty on our third anniversary, my husband stood up from our table in a full restaurant and said he had to go.
Dalton's phone had lit up beside the bread basket.
He read the screen, and his face went still.
"It's Lydia," he said. "Her father collapsed. He's in the ER."
Lydia Sayre was his business partner and his oldest friend.
She had brought me soup when I had the flu, and she had cried at our wedding.
"Which hospital?" I asked.
"St. Luke's."
He said it before I finished the question.
"Go," I said. "Of course you go."
"I'll be back before dessert." He kissed my forehead. "Order the tasting menu. Don't let them clear my plate."
Then he walked out between the tables, buttoning his coat, and the whole room watched him leave.
I was wearing a red dress.
I had bought it three weeks ago, after three years of beige, and I had not told him the price.
The staff had put a card at his place that said Happy Anniversary, Cora and Dalton, with a candle lit beside it.
At eight-thirty the waiter asked if I wanted to start without him.
I said I would wait.
At nine-fifteen he asked again, more quietly, and the couple at the next table pretended not to listen.
I sold my mother's bakery three years ago and put the money into Dalton's firm.
I used to make forty loaves before sunrise.
Now I hosted his dinners and asked him nothing.
At nine-thirty I texted him: How is her dad?
Nothing came back.
At nine-forty I asked for the check, and the waiter said it was already handled.
"Mr. Hargrove paid when he left," he said.
That was the part I should have thought about.
I paid for the dinner anyway, plus the tip, and I left a hundred on top of it for the candle.
Then I put on my coat and went to St. Luke's.
I had a plan.
I would find Lydia, hold her hand, and tell her we would sit with her father as long as it took.
I would be the wife he wanted me to be.
The sleet started on Michigan Street.
By the time I reached the Hoan Bridge the road was glazed black, and the salt trucks were nowhere.
I drove forty miles an hour with both hands on the wheel.
I was at the top of the arch, over the dark harbor, when headlights filled my mirror.
There was no time to move.
The hit came from behind, and the whole car spun.
Then the rail came up on my side, and the roof folded in over my left shoulder.
The airbag cracked across my face.
When it fell away, I could not move my legs.
The dash was in my lap, and the door was bent into my ribs.
Every breath hurt.
My phone had landed on the floor mat, still lit.
I got two fingers on it and dragged it up.
I pressed Dalton's name.
It rang once.
It rang twice.
Then it stopped, and the screen said Call Ended.
A phone does not end a call by itself after two rings.
Someone has to press the button.
I called again.
It rang four times and went to voicemail.
"Dalton," I said. "I'm on the Hoan Bridge. The car is crushed and I can't get out. Please pick up."
My voice was too small, so I said it again, louder.
A text came in before I could say a third time.
Can't talk. Lydia's dad. Don't wait up.
I looked at it for a long time.
The window beside me cracked and fell in, and a man's arm reached through the glass.
"Don't move your neck," he said. "I've got you. Stay with me."
He was big, and he knelt on the ice in a dark wool coat with sleet in his hair.
His hand closed around mine, and it was shaking.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."
I had not told him where I hurt.
I had not told him anything.
There was glass stuck in the shoulder of his coat, glittering in the lights from the stopped traffic.
"The ambulance is coming," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."
He kept his word.
He stayed until the firefighters cut the roof, and he walked beside the stretcher as far as the ambulance doors.
At St. Luke's a nurse cut my sleeve open and asked who she should call.
"Is your husband on his way?" she said.
I thought about the two rings.
"Take his name off," I said. "Put Agnes Dunleavy."
Agnes was the old baker who had given me my first job at fourteen.
The nurse wrote it down and did not ask why.
They wheeled me down a long hallway toward the scanner.
On the left there was a waiting room with glass doors.
Dalton was sitting inside, in the same coat he had worn to dinner.
Lydia sat next to him with her head on his shoulder, and his hand was flat across her stomach.
Neither of them looked like people whose father was dying.
My phone was in my hand, and I pressed his name again.
Across the glass, his phone lit up on the arm of the chair.
He glanced at it.
Then he turned it face down and put his hand back on her.
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