Chapter 3 - HE HELD HER LIKE HIS WIFE WAS INVISIBLE
After dinner, the photographer projected old college photographs onto a screen beside the dance floor.
Then a picture appeared of twenty-one-year-old Owen carrying Camille on his back at a football tailgate.
The room erupted.
“Recreate it!”
Derek shouted.
Someone else joined in.
“Come on!”
Camille shook her head.
“Absolutely not.”
“Twenty years later!”
“Rebecca won’t care,” Derek called.
And then came the sentence that would follow me for months.
“Rebecca’s cool.”
People laughed.
Rebecca’s cool.
I had spent eleven years earning that reputation.
Cool Rebecca didn’t complain when Owen missed anniversaries because a freezer failed.
Cool Rebecca hosted investors on two hours’ notice.
Cool Rebecca didn’t ask why her husband stayed at the restaurant until midnight.
Cool Rebecca understood.
Cool Rebecca never embarrassed anyone.
Owen turned toward me.
Our eyes met.
Three seconds.
I said nothing.
I did not smile.
I did not nod.
I did not give him permission.
I simply looked at him.
I wanted, just once, to see what my husband would choose if nobody rescued him from having to choose.
Then Owen turned back.
Camille jumped onto his back.
The room cheered.
He carried her three steps.
She slid down laughing, lost her balance, grabbed his shoulders, and kissed the corner of his mouth.
The room made that stupid delighted sound crowds make when something inappropriate happens safely to someone else.
“Oh God,” Camille said, covering her mouth. “Sorry. That was supposed to be your cheek.”
Owen wiped his mouth with his thumb.
He was smiling.
Derek shouted, “Print that one!”
The photographer lowered her camera.
Her expression had changed.
Owen came toward me.
“You okay, Bec?”
I looked at him.
“Are you?”
He laughed, kissed my hair, and walked away before I answered.
Margaret set down her glass.
“If a man does that while his wife is ten feet away,” she said softly, “I generally assume distance isn’t the problem.”
I remembered the 11:47 phone call.
I remembered Lucas’s construction contract.
I remembered Owen’s twice-trimmed beard.
His expensive cologne.
Stay close tonight.
Then the DJ announced a slow song.
I knew it before the first chorus.
Apparently, so did half their college crowd.
Camille put both hands over her face.
“No.”
Owen stood.
“Yes.”
“Owen.”
“For old times.”
People cheered.
He held out his hand.
She took it.
For the first thirty seconds, they danced politely.
A foot of space between them.
Hands placed carefully.
I could have survived that.
Then Derek shouted, “That is not how you two used to dance!”
Camille laughed.
And stepped closer.
Her arms went around Owen’s neck.
Owen hesitated.
I saw it.
That hesitation mattered more to me than anything that happened afterward.
Because hesitation meant he knew.
His hand moved from the center of her back to her waist.
He pulled her close.
Her cheek settled against his chest.
He closed his eyes.
His mouth touched her hair.
And his thumb moved slowly over the fabric of her dress.
Something inside me became perfectly calm.
I raised my phone.
May you like
Nine seconds.
Then I sent the video to her husband.
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