324 Nights. Not One Was Mine

At the Christmas dinner, my husband's mother, Margaret, slammed a thick stack of hotel receipts into my face in front of the entire family. "All of you—look! Look at what my son married!" "Three years. Three hundred and twenty-four hotel stays. Every single one at the Ritz-Carlton, Suite 1204!" I stood there holding the papers, and my first instinct was to look at my husband, Ethan. Because that supplementary credit card—he'd been the one who borrowed it, said he needed it to entertain clients. But he just sat there, face ashen, and didn't say a single word in my defense. The next second, Margaret lunged at me and slapped me twice across the face. Then the whole family pressed in, forcing me to sign away every last piece of our joint property. Three months later, I sank into a severe depression. I put a gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger. It was only after I died that I learned the truth. The one who'd actually been checking into that hotel room was my husband—with Lindsay, his first love and his coworker. Margaret had known all along. She just needed an excuse to throw me out without spending a cent, so that mistress—three months pregnant—could walk right in and take my place. Then time rewound. I was back at the moment Margaret hurled those hotel records at me. This time, I didn't cry. I didn't scramble to defend myself. Instead, in front of everyone, I picked up my phone and dialed Lindsay's husband. "I have all the hotel records for your wife and my husband right here. Would you like to come see them?" The line went silent for two seconds. Then the man's voice came through, low and cold. "Address." I gave it to him. "Wait for me." The moment the call ended, the dining room went dead quiet. Ethan was the first to react. He shot to his feet and reached for my phone, his face twisted. "Evelyn, have you lost your mind?" I took a step back and gripped the phone tight. "What—scared?" Margaret sprang up. "You have the nerve to sling mud at my son?!" "Caught red-handed sleeping around, and now you want to drag my son down with you? What kind of vicious woman are you?!" Chloe caught on then and yanked out her phone, aiming it at me. "Evelyn, unbelievable. Evidence right in your face and you still won't own up." "I'm recording all of this. I'm posting it on Facebook so every single person who knows you can see exactly what kind of woman you are!" My chest went cold. Before time rewound, it was videos exactly like that one that had made the rounds—reaching every person I knew. After that, wherever I went, I could hear people whispering. Even the retirement community where my mother lived had been buzzing with it. This time, I didn't lunge for her phone. I just stared at Ethan. "Aren't you going to explain?" "You know exactly whose hands that supplementary card was in." Panic flickered through Ethan's eyes and was gone in an instant, replaced by that same wounded, long-suffering look. "Evelyn, are you done?" "After what you've done, you're going to make me spell it out in front of everyone?" He pulled two documents out of his briefcase and slapped them on the dining table. A divorce agreement. And a waiver of property rights. I glanced down and my stomach dropped. The house, the car, every dollar in every joint account—all of it went to Ethan. I got nothing. And on top of that, the agreement stipulated I owed him a million dollars in "emotional damages." I stared at that document, so clearly prepared well in advance, and suddenly I laughed. "Very thorough." "How long did you rehearse today's little performance?" Margaret's hand flew and cracked across my face again. "You have the gall to talk about *rehearsal*?!" "You spent three years taking my son's money to sleep with other men, and now the evidence is right in front of you and you're still trying to talk your way out of it!" The slap rang in my ears. The metallic taste of blood filled my mouth. Chloe held up the agreement and the hotel records together and shouted at the relatives around the table. "Robert, Diane, look at this! She used my brother's money to book over three hundred hotel rooms, and now that she's caught, she's trying to flip it on him!" The relatives, who'd been watching like it was theater, changed their expressions all at once. Diane sighed first. "Evelyn, honey, the most important thing in a marriage is fidelity. How could you do something like this?" Patricia frowned. "Ethan hasn't treated you badly, has he? What exactly weren't you satisfied with?" Vanessa piped up snidely, "No wonder there's still no baby after all these years of marriage. Her heart was never in this family to begin with." Every word aimed straight at the softest places. I clenched my fists and looked at Ethan. "When you took that supplementary card, you told me you needed it to entertain clients." "So what—now you entertain clients in hotel beds?" The room went still. Ethan's eyes turned to ice. But before he could say anything, Margaret collapsed to the floor in a heap and began wailing, pounding her thigh. ---