Chapter 2 - THE EX-GIRLFRIEND HE NEVER REALLY LET GO
The wedding belonged to Owen’s college roommate, Ethan Mercer, who was marrying a woman named Natalie Price at an old lakeside inn in Lake Geneva.
Owen had a supplier meeting that morning, so we drove separately.
When I entered our hotel room an hour before the ceremony, he was standing at the mirror trimming his beard.
He had already trimmed it at home.
“You’re doing it twice?” I asked.
He grinned at my reflection.
“Important crowd.”
“Ethan has seen you throw up into a mailbox.”
“Exactly. Reputation repair.”
Two ties lay across the bed.
One charcoal.
One navy.
He held them up.
“Which says successful but emotionally available?”
“Neither.”
“Rebecca.”
“The navy.”
“You always know.”
I tied it for him because somehow, after eleven years of marriage and three restaurants, my husband still made knots that looked like frightened birds.
I had just tightened it when he said, too casually, “Camille might be here.”
My hands stopped.
“Camille Warren?”
“Foster now.”
I looked at him in the mirror.
Every marriage has a collection of old names.
People who existed before you.
Most names fade into harmless trivia.
Camille had not.
She and Owen dated through most of college.
Three years.
She was in photographs from a life I had never known.
For most of our marriage, she had been an occasional story.
Then, the previous summer, she had started calling.
Not often.
Three times that I knew of.
One call came at 11:47 at night.
Owen had stepped onto our back porch to take it.
When I asked later, he said she was having trouble with a renovation project and wanted restaurant advice.
I let it go.
“Her husband coming?” I asked.
“Probably. Lucas is wrapping up a job in Racine.”
Lucas.
The contractor who had renovated our third restaurant.
Suddenly I understood something Owen had never bothered to explain.
“You hired her husband.”
Owen looked down at his cuff.
“He’s good.”
“You told me Ethan referred him.”
“Ethan mentioned him too.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“Becca.”
There was affection in the nickname.
And warning.
A combination I had spent years mistaking for intimacy.
“It’s a wedding,” he said. “Can we not interrogate every detail?”
“I asked one question.”
He kissed my forehead.
“Stay close tonight, okay? The old crowd gets ridiculous.”
At the time, I thought that was sweet.
Hours later, I understood what he actually meant.
Stay close enough to make me feel innocent.
The ceremony was beautiful.
Ethan cried before Natalie reached the end of the aisle.
I cried because I cry at weddings, retirement speeches, elderly dogs, and videos of soldiers surprising their mothers—anything involving people being loved in public.
Owen held my hand during the vows.
For forty-five minutes, I believed I had imagined the tension in the hotel room.
Then cocktail hour began.
Camille Foster came down the stone steps toward the lawn.
She wore a soft gold dress and carried her heels in one hand.
Her brown hair was loosely pinned, strands moving in the breeze off the lake.
She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what frightened me.
My husband’s face was.
Owen had been explaining something to a former classmate about imported olive oil.
He stopped in the middle of a sentence.
Just stopped.
His shoulders changed.
His eyes changed.
For a second, he looked twenty-two.
“Owen Hale,” Camille called.
He smiled.
Not the smile he used with customers.
Not the smile from magazine photographs.
Not even the smile he usually gave me anymore.
Something younger.
Unprotected.
“Camille Warren.”
“Don’t you dare.”
She reached him and wrapped both arms around his neck.
Owen hugged her back.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Then they separated.
Camille turned toward me immediately.
“You must be Rebecca.”
She took both my hands.
“I’ve wanted to meet you forever.”
Forever.
Interesting word.
“Owen talks about you constantly,” she said.
I smiled.
“That must get exhausting.”
She laughed.
Owen did not.
“My husband should be here soon,” Camille said. “He’s finishing a punch list in Racine.”
“Lucas?”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You know him?”
“He renovated our Shorewood location.”
“Oh my God. Of course.”
She looked at Owen.
“You never told me Rebecca ran the business side.”
That sentence stayed with me.
You never told me.
Owen picked up his drink.
“She does a little of everything.”
A little.
I had personally signed the last sixty-two payroll batches.
I knew which line cook had a child with leukemia, which bartender was taking night classes, which dishwasher sent half his money to his mother, which supplier gave us thirty-day terms instead of fourteen.
A little of everything.
Camille smiled warmly at me.
I liked her less because I liked her.
If she had been cruel, I could have hated her cleanly.
Instead she asked about my work, complimented my dress, and said she admired anyone who could keep restaurant books without drinking at breakfast.
Then the old stories began.
At dinner, the seating chart placed us with Owen’s college crowd.
Camille sat across from him.
Lucas’s chair remained empty.
A man named Derek, already loud from bourbon, started telling stories.
A winter road trip.
A failed camping weekend.
A professor who used to throw chalk.
Slowly, every story curved toward Owen and Camille.
“Remember the snowstorm?” Derek asked.
Camille groaned.
“No.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
Owen laughed.
“You tried to drive that terrible blue Corolla through six inches of snow.”
“It was not terrible.”
“The passenger door didn’t open.”
“It opened.”
“From the outside.”
“You remember way too much.”
“So do you.”
“Bet you don’t remember the license plate.”
Owen took a sip of sparkling water.
“LJ4-819.”
Camille stared at him.
Then she laughed.
“What is wrong with your brain?”
Everyone at the table laughed.
I didn’t.
I couldn’t remember the license plate on the car Owen had driven when we got married.
He probably couldn’t either.
Beside me sat Ethan’s seventy-six-year-old aunt Margaret, a retired court reporter with silver hair and eyes that missed nothing.
She leaned slightly toward me.
“I spent forty-two years listening to people answer questions under oath.”
I glanced at her.
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It teaches you where to look.”
“Where?”
“At the person they’re performing for.”
I followed her gaze.
Owen was telling a story to the whole table.
But he was looking only at Camille.
May you like
Margaret lifted her water glass.
“There you go.”
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