Page 50 of Happy Wife

“Nora, I’m thinking we should do the champagne toast in about twenty-five minutes,” she said. “Just before sunset.”

“You could have called!” Fritz went on. The sound of his voicereverberated up the hallway. “I could have sent you something basic. Something to protect the firm.”

What the hell does that mean?

Since we returned from Nevis, everything felt shiny and new. Maybe it was naïve, but the wedding ring on my finger made me feel like a bona fide member of Will’s circle. My mom had been so excited she shrieked, and I swear I could hear her all the way from Bali. Even Mia had been by to deliver flowers and a hug. She was genuinely excited for us.

Constance tacked in the other direction and completely ignored the fact that anything had happened. Where she had been brazen in her outbursts before, she suddenly fell silent, offering zero acknowledgment of any kind. I would have taken a halfhearted congratulations as a sign that we could start to coexist, even in the most tepid sense. But blatantly ignoring the whole thing was as cutting a choice as she could make.

Well played, Constance.

Will had roped Autumn into planning a wedding celebration at the house. And, over the course of a day, she had transformed his place—our place—into one of her picture-perfect parties. She arrived bright and early that morning with a burst of energy and a take-charge attitude. Furniture was rearranged, service stations created, and floral arrangements tastefully distributed. She moved quickly through her tasks, talking layouts and itineraries. And when she finally had put order to chaos, she came to help me choose an outfit.

“So you just got married? Just like that?” she had said as she stood in the closet wide-eyed, holding the dress she’d chosen. There was a combination of wonder and horror as I told her about the wedding. For an event planner as meticulous as she was, such a spontaneous affair was one of Dante’s innermost circles of hell.

I’d ignored her judgment and nodded blissfully. “It was perfect.”

Maybe she didn’t care for elopements, but Autumn knew how to throw a party. And once the event was in full swing, it felt like something out of a movie. Like Jay Gatsby himself had come back to life for one last hurrah. The air buzzed with excitement and laughter and the faint sound of clinking champagne glasses. She had insisted the servers pour only Dom Pérignon for the firsthour, and I didn’t even want to imagine the bill for that. There was a dance floor and a fourteen-piece band, working their way through the wedding reception hits.

But as the night went on, it turned out Autumn was in the majority with her shock over Will’s decision to elope. When I passed pockets of people chatting, I kept catching weird snippets of conversation. Phrases like “gold digger” and “shotgun wedding” bubbled up from the crowd. It felt like one of those dreams where you’re naked on the first day of school. With every errant whisper or comment, I took another sip of champagne—as some deranged, self-punishing drinking game.

So by the time Fritz and Will were having a fight in Will’s home office about why I hadn’t signed a prenuptial agreement and I listened in from the kitchen, I was well and truly hammered. Enough so that it took a minute to even occur to me that Autumn was hearing Fritz’s shouting, too.

I looked desperately at her for help. “Do you think people can hear them?”

Am I slurring my words?

“Everyone’s outside,” she said confidently. “I’ll bring Fritz another drink. That should break things up.”

I quickly drained the champagne flute she handed me. “Thanks. I smight need another one of these.”

Shit. I am slurring my words.

She shook her head and handed me a glass of water.

“Go outside and get some fresh air,” she soothed. “Be back in twenty minutes. I’ll tell the band to take their break around that time, and when you hear the music stop, that will be your cue to meet me by the dance floor. Try to be a little bit less…drunk by then, okay?”

She was managing me. I had just been managed. But I could see it was coming from a good place, and when the room swam a little, I knew she was right. I needed some water and a little fresh air. Autumn headed for the bar without another word.

I stood in the kitchen for a few seconds, drinking water and wondering if Will would come looking for me. Then, deciding I didn’t want him to see me in this state, I meandered out the side door and along the side of the house, where a hedge served as a barrier between our house and the next. By my champagne logic,that seemed like as good a place as any to sit down for a second. But as I leaned against the hedge, I fell straight through the shrub branches, bonking my head on the ground hard enough to ring my ears.

“Ow.” I rubbed the back of my head.

“You okay?”

A celestial-looking woman appeared above me. Everything about her was breezy and flowing, from her long, golden brown beach waves to her silk caftan. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was some kind of fairy or an angel. The thought almost made me laugh, but I bit my lip to quell my giggles. I had just fallen into her yard. No need to further alarm her.

“I’m Este.” She cocked her head at me.

“Nora.” I blushed as I walked my hands back until I could sit up on her side of the property line.

“Okay, Nora. What are you doing in the hedge?”

“Sorry to be…I was just—” I shook my head, trying to lose the champagne spins, and pointed back toward the party. I took a breath to compose myself. “I live next door. I was sent outside to sober up,” I confessed.

Something close to recognition settled on her face. “You’re the young, new wife I heard the country club moms prattling on about at yoga.” She shook her head. “Boy, do theyhateyou.”

It should have hurt. Her repeating this gossip back to me should have registered as something in the vicinity of pain. But she wasn’t saying anything I didn’t already know. And at least she was saying it to my face.

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