The Other Mrs.(35)

“Maybe she just wanted to pay her respects,” Karen suggests.

Susan harrumphs. “Highly doubtful.”

“I take it the marriage didn’t end on friendly terms,” I say, though it doesn’t need to be said. What marriage ends amicably?

The ladies exchange a look before they tell me. “I thought it was common knowledge,” Susan says. “I thought everyone knew.”

“Knew what?” I ask, and they shift seats, getting rid of the empty one in between, and tell me how Jeffrey was married to Courtney when he and Morgan met. That their marriage started as an affair. Morgan was his mistress, they confess, whispering that word, mistress, as if it’s dirty. A bad word. Jeffrey and Morgan worked together; she was his administrative assistant. His secretary, as cliché as that sounds. “They met, they fell in love,” Susan says.

The way Morgan’s mother told it to them, Jeffrey and his then-wife, Courtney, had been at each other’s throats for a long time. Morgan wasn’t the one to break up their marriage. It was already broken. Their marriage had always been volatile: two like-minded people who constantly clashed. What Morgan told her in the early days of their affair was that Jeffrey and Courtney could both be stubborn and hotheaded. Overwhelmingly type A. Morgan’s demeanor, on the other hand, was the better fit for Jeffrey.

I turn back to Jeffrey and his ex. The exchange is heated and brief. She says something curt, then turns and leaves.

I think that’s it then. That’s all.

I watch as Jeffrey turns to the next in line. He forces a smile and reaches out his hand.

The ladies beside me go back to their gossip. I listen in, but my eyes stay on Jeffrey. Susan and Karen are talking about Morgan and Jeffrey. About their marriage. True love, I hear, though from the expression on his face—detached, dispassionate—I don’t see it. But maybe this is a form of self-preservation. He’ll cry later, in private, once the rest of us are gone.

“There’s no stopping true love,” Karen says.

A thought runs through my mind just then. There is one way to stop it.

Susan asks if anyone wants more cookies. Karen says yes. Susan leaves and returns with a plate of them for us to share. They return to their conversation about Patty, decide to start up a meal train for her to be sure she eats. If no one is cooking for her, it’s liable, in her grief, that Patty won’t eat. This worries them. Karen thinks aloud about what she’ll make. She has a potpie recipe she’s been wanting to try, but she also knows that Patty is quite keen on lasagna.

Only I am still watching as Jeffrey, a minute later, excuses himself and slips from the room.

I push my chair back and stand. The legs of the chair skid across the floor and the ladies look sharply at me, surprised by my sudden movement.

“Any idea where the restroom is?” I ask, incanting, “Nature calls.” Karen tells me.

The hallway is relatively quiet. Though not a large building by any means, there are a handful of halls, which lessen in people the farther I go. I turn left and right, the halls becoming vacant before I come to a dead end. I find myself backtracking to where I began.

The lobby, when I reach it, is empty. Everyone is inside the fellowship hall.

There are two doors before me. One for the sanctuary, and one to go outside.

I draw open the doors to the sanctuary by an inch or two, just enough to see inside. The sanctuary is small, poorly lit, cast in shadows. The only light comes from the four stained glass windows on either side of the room. A cross hangs above the pulpit, looking out at the columns of rigid pews.

I think that the sanctuary is empty. I don’t see them at first. I’m about to leave, thinking they’re outside, considering the possibility that they’re not together at all. That she’s left the building and he’s in the restroom.

But then it’s the movement I see. Her hands rise up sharply as she shoves him.

They’re tucked in the far corner of the room. Courtney has Jeffrey backed against a wall. He reaches out to stroke her hair, but she pushes him away again, hard enough that this time, he cradles his hand against himself as if injured.

The ex-wife slaps Jeffrey across the face just then. I flinch, drawing back from the doorway like I’m the one who’s been hit. His head turns sharply to the right, then comes back to center. I hold my breath and it’s only because she raises her voice then that I hear her, these words louder than all the rest. “I’m not sorry for what I did,” she confesses. “She took everything from me, Jeff. Every damn thing, and she left me with nothing. You can’t blame me for trying to take back what’s mine.”

She waits a beat before she adds on, “I’m not sorry she’s dead.”

Jeffrey grabs ahold of her wrist. Their eyes bore into each other. Their mouths move, but they’re quiet now, voices muted. I can’t hear what they say. But I can imagine, and what I imagine is hateful and barbed.

I take a careful step into the room. I hold my breath, sharpen my focus, try desperately to home in on what they say. At first, I just barely make out phrases like won’t tell and never know. A fan has kicked on in the room. Their voices are muted by the sound of blowing air. It doesn’t go on long, thirty seconds maybe. Thirty seconds of the conversation I miss. But then the fan quiets down, and their voices rise. Their words come back to me.

“What you did,” he breathes out, shaking his head.