1: 1
I was dropping off a delivery at the Riverton complex when my wife called.
“Babe, there's an old man who fell in unit 1502. Go help him, quick!”
I took the stairs two at a time up to the fifteenth floor and found the apartment.
The old man was fine. Just a leg cramp.
I helped him over to the couch, and he looked at me, grateful.
“Thank you. I don't get around well anymore. My son and his girlfriend are already on their way.”
I smiled and asked to use the bathroom.
From outside the door came a man's and a woman's voices, both anxious.
“Dad, are you okay?”
The woman said to the man “Babe, maybe we should take Dad to the hospital to get checked?”
It hit me like a bolt through the chest. The woman's voice was exactly like my wife's.
I told myself I'd misheard, but when I opened the door, there was Susan Gilbert, arm in arm with another man.
The second she saw I hadn't left, the panic washed over her.
“Stanley Dickerson, why are you still here?”
I gave a cold laugh. “You called him babe. So what does that make me?”
She started to explain. I didn't look back. I just walked out.
Three years together. I'd thought our love had passed the test of time.
The bet with my father, I'd lost it.
Time to let go.
1
Susan wouldn't let me leave, no matter what. She rushed over and grabbed me.
“Babe, let me explain. Bryce Walker and I were only pretending to be married. Nothing happened between us, I swear!”
I shook her hand off and looked at her, cold.
“A fake married couple. What a clean, pretty way to dress up an affair.”
I noticed the ring on Bryce's finger and let out a bitter laugh.
“You even put on rings. Same style as the one I've got on, no less.”
Bryce's face went awkward, and he quickly hid his hand behind his back.
“Stanley, Susan and I really are innocent.”
“I've got cold feet about marriage. No confidence in it. So I asked her to play my wife for a while, to help me build up some confidence!”
“That's right, son. There's really nothing going on between them.”
“All those times my son brought your wife over, they just had a meal with me and kept me company!”
“Your wife can cook, and she keeps a house spotless too. You'd better hold on to her!”
The old man's words were like red-hot needles, driven one after another straight into my heart.
So every night Susan didn't come home, she'd been at this old man's place, doing his laundry and cooking his meals.
So it turned out she could do housework after all.
I looked down at the wedding ring on my hand. It felt heavy, heavy enough to crush the air out of me.
I slid it off and dropped it on the floor, light as nothing.
Susan couldn't believe it. Her eyes went wide.
“Stanley, what is this supposed to mean? Are you trying to humiliate me?”
“Humiliate you? Where were you when I was out delivering food in the wind and rain?”
“Where were you when I was sick and running a fever and needed someone to take care of me?”
“I'd finish work, cook dinner, and wait for you to come home. I'd call your phone and it was switched off. Where were you then?”
The string of questions left Susan with nothing to say.
I raised the action camera in my hand and said in a low voice:
“This thing's been recording from the second I walked in. I meant it to keep me from getting blamed for something. Now it's proof that you cheated!”
“You say you and Bryce are innocent? Fine. I'll copy this footage and play it right outside your shop, and we'll see what the neighbors have to say!”
I turned to go, and her voice cracked into tears.
“Stanley, you'd ruin my good name?”
When she saw it wasn't moving me, she turned straight to Bryce.
“Don't let him leave. Grab that camera out of his hand!”
