My Husband Let His Mistress Poison Me

The restaurant is the kind of place where the waiters wear white gloves and know not to refill your water until the glass is exactly half empty. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the East River. The silverware is heavy. The napkins are linen. Everything costs too much and tastes like obligation.

I sit three chairs away from Evander. Close enough to be his wife. Far enough to be forgotten.

There are eight of us at the table. Clients from a Singapore firm. Their lawyer. Their translator. Waverly Ortiz sits directly across from Evander, taking notes on a tablet, her fingers fast and precise. She's wearing navy blue. Modest neckline. Pearl earrings. She looks like someone's favorite daughter.

The first course arrives. Something with microgreens and edible flowers. I push it around my plate. My beta-blocker makes everything taste like metal.

The client on Evander's left raises his champagne glass. He's older, red-faced, the kind of man who thinks volume equals authority. He begins a toast in Mandarin. The translator leans in to whisper the English into Evander's ear, but I see Evander's jaw tighten. Whatever is being said, it's not good.

The client's voice rises. He's smiling, but it's the wrong kind of smile. A challenge. A test. The translator's whisper becomes more urgent.

Evander reaches for his champagne glass. His hand is steady, but I know that grip. Knuckles just slightly too white. He's about to drink to something he doesn't agree with. Something that will cost him later.

Waverly moves first.

She stands, just slightly, and reaches across the table. Her hand closes over Evander's glass before he can lift it. She meets the client's eyes and raises the champagne.

"Allow me," she says. Her voice is bright. Warm. She tilts the glass toward the client in a gesture that looks like respect and drinks the entire thing in one long swallow.

The table goes quiet.

She sets the empty glass down gently. She smiles at the client. He laughs. A big, booming sound. He says something in Mandarin that makes the others laugh too. The translator doesn't bother translating. The tension breaks like a snapped thread.

Evander stares at her. I watch him stare at her.

The main course comes. Wagyu beef. Truffle risotto. I eat three bites. Waverly eats nothing. She's gone pale. She presses her napkin to her mouth. Her hand trembles just slightly.

"Excuse me," she whispers. She stands. Evander stands with her.

"I'll take you outside," he says. His hand goes to her back. The same place he used to touch me. Before the surgery. Before the medications. Before I became something that needed careful handling.

They leave the table together. I watch them walk toward the restroom hallway. His hand stays on her back the entire way.

The client across from me asks a question about market projections. I smile. I nod. I have no idea what I say.

Twenty minutes pass. Evander returns alone. He sits down and picks up his fork like nothing happened. The client asks where his associate went.

"She wasn't feeling well," Evander says. "I sent her home in a car. Incredibly selfless, what she did. Saved us all a very awkward conversation."

The client nods approvingly. "Good instincts. You should keep that one close."

"I intend to," Evander says.

I set down my fork. The sound is too loud. Evander doesn't look at me.

Dessert arrives. Something with gold leaf. I stand.

"Excuse me," I say. "Restroom."

No one responds. I'm not sure anyone hears me.

I walk past the hallway where Evander took Waverly. I keep walking. Through the bar. Through the lobby. Out the front doors into the cold March air.

I stand on the sidewalk. The river is black and flat. A taxi passes. Then another. I could get in one. I could go anywhere.

But I don't.

I think about the nitroglycerin bottle on my nightstand. The refill date I wrote down. The torn divorce papers in my drawer.

I think about Waverly's pale face. Her trembling hand. The way Evander touched her back.

I think about the bullet fragment lodged two millimeters from my left ventricle. The scar tissue. The daily pills. The thing I did that was supposed to mean something.

A woman who faked a stomachache just got more tenderness than the woman who took a bullet.

I stand there until my hands go numb. Then I go back inside. I return to the table. I sit in my chair. Evander is laughing at something the client said. He doesn't ask where I went.

I finish my dessert. It tastes like nothing.

We leave at eleven. In the car, Evander checks his phone. He types something. His mouth curves up at the corner. Not quite a smile. Something smaller. Something I used to get.

He doesn't say a word to me the entire ride home.