I Came Out Of Prison To Find My Husband Having A Wedding To Another Woman

The guard slid a paper bag across the counter.

"Rhea Moretti. Personal effects."

Inside was the dress I'd worn the night they arrested me. Black silk. A wine stain still on the hem from the party Dante had thrown that evening.

"Anyone coming for you?" the guard asked.

"My husband."

She glanced at the empty parking lot behind me. Then she popped her gum.

"Sure, honey."

I changed in a bathroom stall that smelled like bleach. The dress hung loose now. Three years of prison food had carved me down to bone and stubbornness. I zipped it anyway.

Outside, I waited forty minutes on a cracked bench.

No black Mercedes. No Dante.

No one.

I called the house from the pay phone by the gate. It rang six times before a stranger picked up.

"Moretti residence."

"Put Dante on."

"Mr. Moretti is busy with guests. Who's calling?"

I hung up.

Guests. On the day his wife walked out of Bedford Hills.

Fine. I'd come to him.

---

The cab driver kept cutting his eyes to me in the mirror.

"You going to a party, ma'am?"

"Something like that."

"Nice house," he said when we pulled up the long drive. Then he frowned. "Looks like there's a real party going on."

He was right. Cars lined the gravel. White roses climbed every pillar of the porch. Music drifted out from the garden, soft violins.

I paid him with the forty dollars the state gave me on release. I didn't wait for change.

The front door was unlocked. The housekeeper, a young woman I'd never seen before, blocked the hall with a tray of champagne.

"Excuse me, the ceremony's out back. Are you on the list?"

"I'm on the deed."

She blinked. I stepped around her.

The French doors to the garden stood open. Fifty, maybe sixty people sat in white chairs. My chairs. I'd picked them out for our fifth anniversary.

And at the end of the aisle, under an arch of roses, stood my husband.

Dante Moretti. Thirty-four. Head of the Moretti family since his father died. Charcoal suit, no tie, that easy smile that made judges nervous and women stupid.

I used to be one of those women.

He was holding a hand. Small. Manicured. Pale pink nails.

Bianca Russo.

My cousin's best friend. The girl who used to sit at my kitchen island and call me *sister*. She wore white lace, and her hair was pinned up with the pearl combs I'd left in my vanity.

Dante slid a diamond ring onto her finger.

The guests clapped.

I didn't make a sound. I just started walking down the aisle.

The first person to notice was Dante's cousin Marco. His champagne glass tipped and spilled over his shoes.

"Holy shit."

Heads turned. The violins stuttered, then quit.

Bianca saw me next. Her face went white as her dress.

"Dante!" She shrieked and threw herself against his chest, fists bunched in his lapels. "Dante, she's here, why is she *here*—"

His arm came around her.

Automatic. Protective. The same way it used to come around me.

That was the part that made my knees go soft. Not the ring. Not the roses. That arm.

Then he looked at me.

Three years. One thousand and ninety-five days of counting. I'd imagined this moment every night on that thin mattress. Him running to me. Him on his knees. Him saying he was sorry.

His jaw tightened.

"Why are you out early?"

Silence fell over the garden like a sheet.

I laughed.

I didn't mean to. It just came out, sharp and ugly, and it kept coming until I had to press a hand to my mouth.

"Early," I repeated. "Did you just say *early*?"

"Rhea." His voice dropped low, the tone he used on men who owed him money. "We should talk inside."

"No, I think we should talk right here. Everyone's dressed for it."

Bianca peeked out from his shoulder. Her mascara had already started to run.

"Rhea, please. It's not what it looks like."

I tilted my head at the ring on her finger.

"It looks like a wedding, Bianca. Is it a funeral? Because I'd love to know whose."

She burrowed back into his jacket with a whimper.

Dante pressed his free hand to her back. His thumb moved in slow circles. I'd taught him that. When I had migraines, he used to do exactly that.

"You weren't supposed to be released until March," he said.

"Good behavior."

"Nobody told me."

"Nobody told you?" I took a step closer. "I wrote you every week. Two hundred letters, Dante. You ever open one?"

His eyes flicked away. Just for a second.

That was answer enough.

An older woman in the front row stood up. Bianca's mother. She'd brought me lasagna when my father died.

"Rhea, sweetheart, you need to leave. You're not well."

"I'm fine, Mrs. Russo. Prison's very restful."

"Rhea." Dante's voice cracked like a whip now. "Enough."

"Enough?" I could feel my hands shaking, so I curled them into fists. "You want to know what enough is? Enough is the night your guy got shot in the warehouse on Fulton. Enough is you sitting on our bed at three in the morning, crying, telling me your father's enemies would bury you if you got charged."

Murmurs rippled through the chairs.

"Rhea, stop."

"Enough is you kissing my hands and begging me to say the gun was mine. You said a first offense. A wife defending her husband. You said your lawyer had the judge."

"I said *stop*."

"You said three months, Dante." My voice broke on his name, and I hated it. "You promised. You held my face and swore it on your mother's grave."

Bianca lifted her head. Her eyes were wide and wet.

"Dante, what is she talking about? You told me she shot that man because she was jealous. You said she was crazy."

He didn't answer her.

He didn't answer anybody.

I reached into the paper bag still crumpled in my left hand. My fingers found the folded sheet under the silk. Release certificate. Stamped. Signed. Official.

I'd read it so many times on the cab ride that the creases had gone soft.

I pulled it out and threw it at his face.

It hit his cheek and fluttered down onto Bianca's white lace.

"You said three months," I told him. "I waited three years."

For the first time all afternoon, Dante Moretti looked afraid.

Not of me.

His eyes were fixed past my shoulder, toward the open French doors, where a man in a gray suit had just stepped onto the lawn.

I knew that suit. I'd seen it every day of my trial.

It was the prosecutor who had put me away.

And he was smiling.