“Strange how?”
“Late nights. Phone tilted away from you. That sort of strange.”
I thought of Graham’s phone, face down on the counter that morning, and of the way he had laughed at a text and then locked the screen when I walked in.
“Have you noticed anything strange lately?”
“He’s busy, Walter. The new position.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
“It’s our anniversary. He rented an entire restaurant. Two hundred guests.”
Walter nodded as if filing something away.
“Then we should go,” he said. “Whatever happens tonight, Eleanor, I want you to remember one thing.”
“What?”
“You are not what he calls you. You are what you have done.”
I squeezed his hand, gathered my coat, and slid my phone into my clutch beside a small flash drive I had been carrying for almost three months.
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
The restaurant glowed with warm light, and I stood beside Graham. Two hundred faces I half-recognized smiled up at us. Graham tapped his glass, and the room quieted.
“Friends, family, thank you for being here tonight,” he began. “Twenty-seven years is a long time, and I want this evening to be honest.”
I smiled at the word. Honest. I had earned ‘honest.’
Under the table, I glanced at my phone. A new text from Graham, sent ten minutes ago, to me.
“Look at Carol’s face. She still thinks I respect her husband.”
I closed my hand around the phone.
“Before we celebrate, I want to introduce someone special to all of you,” Graham continued his speech.
I turned my head, confused, watching him walk toward the entrance.
