Betrayal Under the Penthouse Lights

My new phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. A San Diego number flashed on the screen.

I swiped to answer. "Hello?"

"Where do you keep the antacids?" Alexander asked.

His voice sounded like rough gravel. He had found my city.

"How did you get this number?" I replied.

"My stomach is killing me. The new maid doesn't know where anything is. She gave me aspirin."

"Ask your mother to find them."

"Don't start with me, Evelyn," he growled. "Theo's fever spiked over 102. He won't stop crying for you. What song did you use to calm him down?"

"Did you give him ibuprofen?"

"He spit it out. He threw his robot at the doctor."

"Then hold him until he stops crying."

"He wants his mother."

My fingers dug into the plastic phone case. My knuckles turned stark white.

"We are divorced, Alexander."

"Stop this nonsense. I don't have time for your games. He needs you."

"I am not your wife," I said, enunciating every syllable. "And I am not your nanny."

"Evelyn—"

"If the child is sick, you call a doctor," I snapped. "You do not call the woman you drove away."

I ended the call.

I didn't block him this time. I popped the back off the phone, slid the tiny plastic SIM card out, and dropped it straight into the garbage can.

I stared at the trash bin. Nine years of my life sat at the bottom of it.

"Marry me," Alexander had told me at the altar, slipping a diamond onto my finger. "Maybe I can give you freedom."

Freedom.

What a joke. My freedom became a single lamp left on in the dark foyer every night. I would sit on the velvet sofa, watching the clock tick past midnight. One o'clock. Two o'clock.

When the front door finally opened, I would bring him a glass of warm milk.

"Here," I would say.

"Hmm," he would answer.

He never looked at me. He just drank it and walked to his separate bedroom.

And then there was Victoria.

Our first year of marriage, we hosted a charity gala. I was upstairs in the dressing room, fixing my dress. Victoria marched a stylist into the room.

She handed the woman a tube of bright red lipstick. She pointed directly to Alexander's crisp white collar on his spare shirt.

"Press it right there," Victoria ordered the stylist.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice trembling.

Victoria turned to me with a flawless, terrifying smile.

"Men entertain outside, Evelyn. It is inevitable they will pick up these little marks. Learn to get used to it."

I didn't know back then that the specific shade of crimson belonged to Serena. Alexander's first love. Victoria just wanted to remind me of my place. She wanted me to know I was a placeholder.

***

I grabbed my skate bag and left the apartment.

The air inside Ruth's Ice Arena smelled of cold ammonia and old rubber. I walked straight to the manager's office.

Ruth sat behind a cluttered desk. Her gray hair was pulled into a tight bun. She studied my application form with a cold, unreadable expression.

"The amateur qualifiers are in exactly two weeks," Ruth stated, dropping my paper.

"I know."

"You haven't touched a pair of skates in nine years. Your right ankle still carries a stress fracture scar. You think you can do this?"

"I don't know," I told her. "But I have to try."

"Why now?"

"Because I have nothing else left."

Ruth leaned forward. Her eyes narrowed, searching my face for any sign of weakness.

"The ice fee is fifty dollars an hour. I don't give discounts for sob stories."

"I don't want a discount. I want ice time."

"You fall, you get up yourself," she warned.

"I always do."

"Go lace up."

***

I hit the ice hard.

My lungs burned. My legs shook. I pushed past the pain, driving my edges into the frozen surface.

"Keep your shoulders square!" Ruth shouted from the boards.

"I am!"

"You're leaning left! Fix it!"

I crossed over. Built speed. I threw myself into a camel spin.

The world turned into a dizzying blur of white and gray. My center of gravity shifted too far forward. Black spots danced at the edge of my vision.

My knee gave out.

I slammed into the ice. The impact knocked the wind from my chest. Cold seeped through my leggings, stinging my bruised skin.

I squeezed my eyes shut, gasping for air.

Metal blades scraped to a halt right next to my head. Ruth squatted down beside me.

"You're pushing yourself too hard," she said.

I wiped a layer of frost from my cheek. "I have to get it right. I only have two weeks."

"And you won't make it to next week if you break your leg today."

"I'm fine."

"You're reckless," she corrected. "But you still have two weeks. Get up."

***

That night, I didn't go straight home.

I drove my cheap rental car to Mission Beach. I sat on the cold sand. The Pacific Ocean roared in the dark, waves crashing violently against the shoreline.

I wrapped my arms around my knees.

For nine years, a heavy stone had sat directly on top of my lungs. It was made of untouched toast, shattered milk glasses, and red lipstick stains. It was made of Alexander's cold gray eyes and Theo's cruel little words.

I took a deep breath of the salty air.

The stone shifted. It cracked.

I picked up a handful of sand and let it slip through my fingers. I was exhausted, my muscles ached, and my ankle throbbed. But for the first time since I was eighteen, the air actually reached the bottom of my lungs. I was finally breathing.

***

Day three of training started before the sun came up.

The arena was completely empty. No Ruth. No teenage cashier. Just me and the ice.

I glided to the center of the rink. I closed my eyes and let muscle memory take over.

I pushed off. My blades carved deep, clean arcs. I leaped, rotated, and landed perfectly on my outside edge. I threw my arms out, spinning faster and faster. I wasn't Evelyn the abandoned wife anymore. I was a bird, finally let out of a gold-plated cage.

I slowed to a graceful stop, chest heaving.

A sudden noise broke the silence. A paper cup hit the rubber matting near the entrance.

I whipped my head toward the sound.

Alexander stood just inside the glass doors. He wore a wrinkled charcoal suit. Dark circles bruised the skin under his eyes.

Hot coffee spilled across the floor from the cup he had just dropped.

He didn't look at the mess. He stared at me on the ice. His jaw hung slightly open. His gray eyes were wide, completely frozen in shock.

He froze in place. He had never seen this Evelyn.

"Evelyn," he breathed, stepping toward the boards.

"How did you get in here?" I demanded, skating toward the edge.

"The door was unlocked."

"Get out."

"We need to talk."

"There is nothing to talk about."

"I flew across the country for you," he insisted, gripping the plastic rim of the boards.

"I didn't ask you to."

Before he could respond, the heavy glass doors swung open again. His personal assistant stepped onto the rubber mat, looking anxious with a ringing phone in hand.

"Mr. Whitmore," the assistant called out cautiously. "The board of directors is on line one. The European merger call can't wait."

Alexander didn't turn around. His gray eyes stayed locked on me, haunted and wide, as if he were looking at a ghost.