Audrey lifted the first folder from the white box, and the garden became so quiet she could hear the soft scrape of a caterer’s shoe against the stone patio.
Matthew stood six feet away from her.
For the first time all afternoon, he was not performing.
His hand had fallen from the confident position near his jacket button.
His mouth was slightly open.
Behind him, the woman Audrey had heard in his office stared at the folder as if she already knew what it contained.
“Audrey,” Matthew said, “don’t do this here.”
It was almost funny.
Three minutes earlier, he had told her not to embarrass him.
Now embarrassment was the least of his problems.
Audrey opened the folder.
The first photograph had been taken outside a hotel forty minutes from Westport.
Matthew was visible beneath the entrance canopy with the same woman standing beside him.
His hand rested at the small of her back.
The second showed them leaving a restaurant during one of the nights Matthew had told Audrey he was meeting a difficult client.
The third had been taken outside an apartment building two towns away.
There were dates beneath every photograph.
Audrey did not read them aloud.
She did not need to.
Matthew crossed the space between them and reached for the folder.
Audrey pulled it back.
“Those prove nothing,” he said quickly.
“She’s worked with me.
We travel for business.
We have dinners with clients.
This is ridiculous.”
His mistress looked at him.
That look did more damage than the photographs.
“Business?” she said.
Matthew turned sharply.
She stared at him, stunned.
“You told me Audrey knew.”
A ripple moved through the guests.
Matthew’s head snapped back toward his wife.
Audrey did not smile.
For months she had imagined this moment in a hundred different ways.
In some versions she screamed.
In others she emptied a glass into his face.
In one particularly satisfying version, she threw his suits onto the lawn.
Reality felt colder.
Cleaner.
She simply closed the folder.
“Thank you,” she said to the woman.
“Audrey, I—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.”
Matthew did.
Corrine rose from her chair.
“This has gone far enough,” she said.
“Audrey, you’re pregnant and understandably emotional.
Whatever difficulties exist between you and Matthew should be handled privately.”
Brenda made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough.
Audrey glanced toward her sister, then back to Corrine.
“Privately?”
Corrine’s posture stiffened.
“There is a child involved.
You should consider what public humiliation does to a family.”
