My husband barely glanced up when I placed my wedding ring on the cocktail table beside him. He was too entranced by the woman in his arms to understand the weight of what I was leaving behind. “Keep dancing with her, James,” I said quietly.
“You won’t even notice I’m gone.”
What he did not know was that I had spent the last six months preparing for that exact moment. By the time morning light touched the California coast, the life he thought he controlled would no longer be able to reach me. I stood at the edge of the crowded ballroom and watched my husband of eleven years spin Victoria Bennett across the polished dance floor of the Oceanside Resort charity gala.
The chandeliers above us glittered like captured stars, throwing warm gold over tuxedos, champagne flutes, and the kind of expensive smiles people wore when they wanted everyone to believe their lives were flawless. James had always been an impressive dancer. It was one of the many talents that had attracted me to him when we first met at law school fifteen years earlier.
Back then, he had danced like a man who believed joy was something to be shared. Tonight, he danced like a man performing possession. His custom-tailored tuxedo emphasized the athletic build he still worked so hard to maintain.
Victoria moved in his arms with practiced elegance, her crimson gown clinging to her as though it had been designed for this particular betrayal. The shade complimented James’s black tie so perfectly that I wondered whether they had coordinated their outfits in advance. “They make quite the pair, don’t they?” Diane Murphy said, appearing beside me with her signature martini in hand.
Diane was the wife of one of James’s law partners and, at least in public, my supposed friend. Her tone was light, but there was a needle underneath it. She was not offering comfort.
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