Anniversary Email

Showtunes played softly on a Steinway. A California cabernet lingering on my lips. The heady aroma of fresh basil and caramelized onions. My wife Brianna stunning in a blue chiffon dress. Everything about our fifth anniversary dinner has been perfect.

The ping of my phone breaks the spell. It’s the email I’ve been waiting for. And dreading.

Brianna aims her knife at my nose. “No phones. You promised.”

“I know, I know. I’ll put it away.” I slide my cell off the table. But I can’t help myself. I thumb open Gmail and read.

My stomach lurches up my throat, threatening to eject my just-eaten filet mignon. It can’t be true. Five years of marriage decimated in one blink of cyberspace.

I stuff my phone in my pocket and try to calm my raging heart. What do I do now? Confront her? Hide it? My plan, if I can even call it a plan, only extended this far.

Brianna slices a piece of ribeye off the bone and forks it into her mouth. She chews with delicate intensity, as if she were grinding grain in her teeth. The gesture, one I’ve witnessed a thousand times at a thousand different meals, seems unfamiliar somehow. Like I’m seeing her again for the first time.

She lowers her fork and gives me her I-know-something-is-wrong look. “You’re quiet tonight. Everything good at work?”

Blood rushes to my face. If I were playing poker, this would be a good time to fold. “They let Austin go today. Feels like I’m on borrowed time.”

Austin came to my cubicle this afternoon and told me the news. I’d felt bad for the guy, so bad I’d taken him to Applebee’s and bought happy-hour Heinekens till his tie was off and he was singing karaoke with a stranger. After the song, he looked at me with beer-blurred eyes and said, “Never trust ‘em, Evan. They’ll rip your heart out.”

Brianna lays her hand on top of mine. Her skin is warm and well-lotioned. She draws small circles with her thumb, and I don’t know whether to be aroused or repulsed. “We’ll be fine,” she says, emphasis on we. “If you get laid off, we can go live with my folks.”

Is she serious? Brianna’s adoptive parents, Chuck and Shirley, have always treated me like one of their servants. Even at our wedding, they paid more attention to the bartender than to me. Maybe they know the truth, know their daughter, know our relationship is doomed.

“Things will work out one way or the other,” I say, though I’m not sure whether I’m talking about my job or my marriage. “How was your day?”

“More conference planning. You’d think we were hosting the Olympics.” She pauses to dab her mouth. “Scott asked if I’d go with him to the boat show in Salt Lake. He wants me to shadow their PR director.”

Scott? Her douchebag boss who keeps calling me Ethan? “When’s the show?” I ask.

“Next weekend. We don’t have anything going on, do we?”

Brianna and I had talked about staying at a bed and breakfast in Amish country. Did she forget? I shrug. “Nothing important.”

Brianna spends the rest of the meal telling me about her job, her upcoming trip, and her boss’s obsession with ramen restaurants. I nod and ask questions, a well-rehearsed pantomime I’ve perfected over the years, though my attention is on her face, not her words. The soft slope of her brow. Her small, almost elfin ears. Brown eyes warm and wide and full of life. People say married couples look alike after living together for decades. Brianna and I got that comment when we were dating, even though I was four years older. Evan and Brianna. Brianna and Evan. Like two sides of a coin.

“Earth to Evan.” Brianna waves her fork in my face. “Did you hear a word I said?”

What was she talking about? Her work trip? “Yeah. You said you’re going to Salt Lake with your boss.”

She skewers me with her eyes. “And?”

I try to mentally rewind the last minute of our conversation, but my mind is a blank screen. “And…you want me to stain the deck while you’re gone?”

“No. I asked if you’d come to Salt Lake with me.” She squeezes my hand. “You need to get away.”

Get away. What Brianna is saying, without saying it out loud, is I need to get away from my hometown, away from my memories. Memories of Mom. She died four months ago, an aneurysm in aisle six of Safeway. The good news was she didn’t have to waste away with breast cancer (she was stage three) or Alzheimer’s (the disease that took Dad). The bad news was I, the last living member of our family, was left to clean out her apartment. That’s when I found her journals.

In the spring of 1999, she’d made a veiled reference to an affair. No names. Just X. As if her lover were a spy working behind enemy lines. I started to put the pieces together. Not the full picture. It was still a vague image, like the edges of a jigsaw.

Now the puzzle is complete. Maybe I should get away. Far, far away.

I top off Brianna’s wine glass and pour the rest of the bottle into mine. “Sure. I’ll go to Salt Lake. Why not?”

A smile blooms on Briana’s face, the same smile that made me fall in love with her six years ago. “Great. Maybe you could go skiing while Scott and I are at the show.” She takes a long sip of wine and sets her glass down. A blood-red lipstick stain smears the rim, just like the stain on her HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE coffee mug.

I’d considered the mug, or her hairbrush. Either would’ve worked. I eventually decided on her toothbrush. Brianna never asked where hers went or why she had a new green one by the sink.

The waiter returns to our table with a candlelit chocolate cake. “I hear it’s a special occasion.” He sets the plate in front of Brianna.

“Thanks,” she says. “It’s our fifth anniversary.”

The word anniversary draws a brow raise from the waiter. “I’m sorry. The maître de said it was your birthday.”

“No worries.” Brianna says. “It’s like a birthday to us. Right, honey?”

A memory bobs to mind. My fourth birthday landed only days before the new millennium. Grammie, always practical, baked a birthday cake and topped it with four candles spelling the year 2000.

“Make a wish,” she’d said.

I didn’t have to think hard. “I wish Mommy was here.”

“Oh, sweetheart. Your mommy had to leave for work. She’ll be back in a few weeks. Don’t you worry.”

But I did worry. Moms weren’t supposed to leave on their kid’s birthday. If that wasn’t a law, it should be.

“Evan?” Brianna’s voice pulls me back. “You okay?”

No. I’m definitely not okay. I force a smile to my face. “Of course. Cheers to us.”

We clink glasses. The waiter’s gaze ping-pongs between us, as if he knows our secret and wants to say something, but he scuttles away without a word.

Brianna turns to me, candlelight dancing in her brown eyes. “Make a wish.” There’s a challenge to her tone. As if she were daring me to play my cards.

I fish my cell out of my pocket and reread the email.

From: Progressive Labs

Subject: DNA test results

There are two columns of DNA markers, one for Evan Cross and one for Jane Doe. At the bottom: Based on test results obtained from analyses of the DNA loci listed above, the probability of half-siblingship is 99.98%.

Brianna is my half-sister.

Her gaze cuts me to the core. “Well?” she says. “What’s your wish?”

My thumb hovers over the screen.

“I wish we could stay like this forever,” I say, then press delete.