My Husband Pretended to Love Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Man Who Remembered

The guests, the photos and the house have forgotten Tamara, and Lydia thinks Stanley just proposed. Alone with his black notebook, he admits he stopped pretending in year two, and Lydia announces an October 12 wedding.

Stanley's POV

At one minute past midnight, I was standing in the gravel with my hands on my knees, out of breath, and a hundred and twenty people were walking toward me with no idea what they were looking at.

My wife's taillights had gone through the gate.

I had her ring in my fist and rain running down the back of my collar.

The music started again on the lawn, a slow song, in the middle of the verse.

Lydia reached me first.

She had her shoes in her hand and her face lit up.

"Stanley," she said. "Oh my God. Ten years, and you finally get down on one knee."

"What?"

"Don't play dumb. Everyone saw you run out here."

I looked at the guests behind her.

They were smiling, a few of them clapping, and one of my cousins held up her phone.

Nobody was looking at the gate.

"Where did Tamara go?" I said.

Lydia's smile stayed.

"Who?"

I said it again, slowly.

"Tamara. My wife. She was at the microphone a minute ago."

"Stanley, you don't have a wife." She laughed and put her hand on my cheek. "You've got me. You've had me since college. Are you drunk?"

I straightened up.

My cousin was still filming, so I walked over and asked to see the video.

She showed me.

It was a clip of me at the microphone, giving a toast, with Lydia in the front row crying.

The words under it were mine, but the toast was to Lydia.

There was no woman in a blue dress on the screen at all.

I looked at the photographer's camera.

I looked at the guests' phones.

I asked six people her name, and each of them gave me the same polite, puzzled smile.

Lydia took my hand, the one without the ring.

"Come inside," she said. "You're shaking."

I let her lead me back across the lawn, and I did not open my other hand until the last guest had left.

Then I went to the study and stood in front of the mantel.

Every photo on it had Lydia in it.

Lydia on the boat, Lydia at the Christmas party, Lydia with her arm through mine on the courthouse steps where Tamara and I had signed our papers.

I took that one off the wall and held it up to the lamp.

The courthouse clerk had stood beside us that day, and now the clerk was gone and Lydia stood in Tamara's place.

I put the frame down on its face.

Upstairs, the closet was full of Lydia's clothes, hung on both sides.

The second toothbrush was Lydia's.

The kettle in the kitchen was cold, and I thought of my wife standing at it in her socks, humming under her breath while it boiled.

Nobody in the world knew about that now except me.

At three in the morning I opened the safe behind the desk and took out the small black notebook.

I had not shown it to anyone, and I had hidden it even from Lydia.

It was in my handwriting, so it had survived.

I opened it to the first page.

Oct. 3, year one. Pine nuts. Anaphylaxis. Never again, not even a crumb.

Under it, in smaller writing: One sugar. Hums when the kettle boils. Hates being told she looks tired.

I turned the pages, and the dates went by.

Year two said: I'm writing this for the file now. Lydia asked me to keep every detail so I'd never slip.

Under it, in different ink, added later: That's a lie. I'm writing it because I want to remember her.

I had stopped pretending in the second year.

I never told Tamara, and I never told Lydia.

I told myself I'd end the lie after Darryl was dealt with, and every year I found a new reason why he wasn't.

Eight more years of those pages sat in my hands, and every one of them was about a woman I had said, into a live microphone, I did not love.

I sat on the floor of the study until it was light.

Then I went down to the kitchen, because someone was moving around in it.

Lydia stood at the counter in Tamara's gray robe, pouring coffee into two cups.

"Morning, fiancé," she said. "I've been thinking."

She slid a cup toward me.

It had two sugars in it.

"I booked the Lake Forest Club for October twelfth," she said. "Thirty days. You said you were done making me wait."

I looked at the cup, and then at the ring in my pocket.

I had thirty days to find a woman the whole world had never heard of.

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