My husband barely glanced up when I placed my wedding ring on the cocktail table beside him. He was too absorbed in the woman in his arms, too lost in the polished sweep of the orchestra and the smooth turn of his own body across the floor, 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 didn’t know was that I had spent the last six months preparing for that exact moment.
By morning, I intended to be untraceable.
I stood at the edge of the crowded ballroom and watched my husband of eleven years spin Victoria Bennett beneath the crystal chandeliers of the Oceanside Resort charity gala. James had always been a beautiful dancer. It was one of the first things that had drawn me to him when we met at law school fifteen years earlier, back when charm still looked like character and precision still looked like integrity.
Tonight, his custom-tailored tuxedo sharpened the athletic lines of his body as he guided Victoria through a tango so intimate it made the other couples on the floor seem almost polite by comparison.
Her crimson gown, designed by a former client of my interior design business, fit her like poured wine. The color suited him. The shape suited him.
They looked coordinated, as if they had chosen each other long before they had chosen the music.
“They make quite the pair, don’t they?” Diane Murphy asked, materializing at my side with a martini in one hand and curiosity in the other.
As the wife of James’s law partner and, supposedly, my friend, Diane had perfected that specific tone women use when they want access to another woman’s humiliation while pretending concern.
“They certainly do,” I said, pleased by how steady my voice sounded. “James has always appreciated beautiful dance partners.”
Diane’s eyes flicked over my face, disappointed not to find a crack. “Victoria’s been working very closely with the partners on the Westlake development.
She’s quite dedicated to the project.”
The Westlake development. A luxury residential complex that had consumed James’s time, attention, and energy for the past eight months. The project that required late nights, last-minute weekend meetings, and business trips that grew more frequent as their explanations grew thinner.
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