Standing in front of the bedroom mirror, I applied my grandmother’s coral lipstick, the shade she wore every day of her adult life. “For my brave little girl,” I murmured to my reflection as I fastened her emerald earrings. They were small, probably worth less than a parking space at Château Blanc, but they were real.
She had worn them during the Great Depression, during my grandfather’s death, during the cancer that finally took her. “Put them on when you need courage,” she had told me.
And tonight, surrounded by Travis’s colleagues who would see right through me as they silently assessed his net worth, I would need every ounce of courage those little stones could give me.
On my way home from school, I passed the Riverside Country Club, its perfectly trimmed hedges lined up like disciplined soldiers against the September sky. My membership card rested in my wallet, granting me access to a world that would never fully accept me, no matter how much Travis insisted I attend the monthly couples’ luncheons. The next one was tomorrow, and the thought of it made my stomach clench.
Lunch arrived in unexpected heat, my department store dress clinging as I stepped through the club’s heavy oak doors. The dining room was set with round tables covered in cream-colored tablecloths, each centerpiece a bouquet of white roses that probably cost more than my weekly grocery bill.
Patricia Rothschild stood near the bar, her gleaming Hermès bag in hand, gesturing animatedly to Jennifer Cross. They were laughing at something Jennifer was saying on her phone.
I sat down at their table, just as Travis had instructed. Patricia’s husband managed a hedge fund that Travis was desperate to acquire, and Jennifer’s family connections stretched across the Northeast Corridor like a network of invisible keys.
Their conversation paused as I approached, and smiles appeared on their faces.
“Savannah, how beautiful,” Patricia whispered, blowing me an air kiss near my ear. “That dress is so… cheerful.”
“Objective?” Jennifer chimed in sweetly, as if she were praising him.
“Nordstrom Rack, actually,” I replied calmly, refusing to shrink back.
“How sensible,” Patricia said, and her tone suggested that she would rather wrap herself in burlap than shop at a discount store.
When the waiter came to order our drinks, Patricia chose a bottle I recognized instantly: three hundred dollars, the same one Travis had ordered the week before to impress the clients. As the Burgundy wine filled our glasses, Patricia’s hand slid out, spilling a river of red wine directly into my lap.
Her gasp could have won an award. “Oh, no. Your little dress is so adorable.”
She blotted it vigorously with the napkins, pressing hard so the stain penetrated deeply. “Totally my fault. Jennifer, don’t you have anything in the car?”
Jennifer’s eyes gleamed theatrically. “I have my workout clothes. Designer workout clothes. They could come in handy in an emergency.”
I stood there, the wine dripping onto the polished marble, aware of all the stares in the room: some pitying, most discreetly pleased. Patricia continued her performance, asking for sparkling water and more napkins, drawing attention to my humiliation as if it were a spotlight.
In the bathroom, I tried to scrub the stain with paper towels and soap, but the color had already set, spreading across my stomach and thighs like a purple bruise under fluorescent lights. From outside the stall, Patricia’s voice echoed down the hall.
Poor guy. Travis really did marry his charity case, didn’t he? You can disguise them, but upbringing always shows.
“She tries so hard,” Jennifer added, feigning sympathy. “Last month she suggested a fundraiser for public school teachers. As if that’s the purpose of our philanthropy committee. Travis must be embarrassed. Imagine having to drive her to company functions.”
I remained inside that cubicle for twenty minutes, fully clothed, staring at the stain that looked like dried blood.
When I finally made it back to the dining hall, they were in the salad. I made a discreet excuse about a classroom emergency and left, driving home in a dress that smelled of wine a little stronger now: a humiliation I refused to let define me.
That night, Travis barely looked up from his screen when I told him about lunch.
“Patricia is a bit clumsy,” he said, typing. “Perhaps next time you’ll choose something that doesn’t get so messy.”
Four months before my birthday, something had begun to quietly unravel, though I didn’t understand it then. It was a Thursday afternoon when a migraine forced me to leave school early. Travis’s car wasn’t in the garage, which fit with his story about flying to Boston for a client meeting.
He was hanging his suits in the closet when a receipt slipped from his jacket pocket and fell to the floor like a fallen leaf. It was from Le Bernardin. Dated yesterday, the same day he claimed to be in Boston. The time was 8:47 p.m., just as he had texted me saying he was exhausted from presentations. Dinner for two: oysters, champagne, chocolate soufflé—the same dessert he always insisted was too heavy for him.
My hands trembled as I inspected the collar of his shirt and found a lipstick stain, an intense shade of ripe plum; nothing like my coral lipstick or the neutral tones I occasionally wore. It wasn’t by chance. It was right where a wife doing laundry would see it. The scent clinging to the fabric wasn’t mine either: something musky, expensive, unfamiliar. It made my stomach churn.
I photographed everything and saved the pictures in a folder called “tax documents” in case he ever checked my phone. Then I put the receipt back in his pocket, hung the suit up exactly as it was, and spent the next hour kneeling in the guest bathroom, throwing up as my body processed what my mind refused to accept.
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