Free The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith

probably part Indian. Old family, old money, although not very much of it anymore. He had noticed her looking at him from across the room. When he started toward her, she had dropped her eyes, pretending to be deeply engrossed in conversation with a very small woman with very large jewels.
    Bill had waited for the woman to leave before he made his move. “You can do me a very big favor. You could take me away from all this,” he said with a boyish grin.
    “Oh, could I now?” she asked. “And where would I take you away to?”
    It was his answer that did it. “To the model-sailboat lake in Central Park.
    I’ve had a boat in the storehouse there ever since I was a kid. I’d much prefer watching it sail across the lake in the moonlight with you by my side to standing in this very overdone room with very overdone people.”
    She hadn’t said anything, just laughed, real, spontaneous laughter. He understood this as an answer, took her hand, and led her through the crowd, away from the party. It wasn’t until they were in the elevator that either one of them spoke, when they both said together, “My name’s … ,” and then started laughing at the timing.
    “Bill Atchison,” he had said, “and I know your name.”
    There had been so many times like that. Spontaneous, fun, and childlike. He was so normal, so natural. It had filled her with joy.
    She felt alive. She’d found herself enchanted by ordinary things, tennis dates with friends, dinners at sweet little restaurants, walks in the Village, in Central Park, through Chinatown.
    He had helped her to be like other people. Not an heiress, not a movie star.
    Just a woman, and a wife. And it seemed so perfect for so long. They had settled into a happy routine, the first normalcy she had ever known. They agreed to basics about how money was to be handled and, from the beginning, it seemed there would be no problems. He accepted the fact that they would be living in her homes, and that she would pay her own bills. He was on the partner track at the law firm of Cromwell Reed, so was able to pay his own expenses and sometimes pick up imaginative presents, with which he was always able to delight her. He never ceased to compliment her looks, her clothes, her taste. She was a catch, and she took delight in his pleasure at showing her off. It seemed that he was so perfect for her.
    She had helped him enormously with his career. He handled all her business, and she had brought him the Van Gelders’ business and that of other friends.
    Being able to entertain the partners of the firm in any one of three homes in the area hadn’t hurt his chances for a partnership, either.
    She had accepted his late nights, delighting in a man with enough drive to do his job, but without an all-consuming competitive ambition. He had lots of time for her, so she rarely questioned him on those nights, accepting his broad explanation of work.
    She first found out that Bill was cheating on her when she overheard one of the maids at her mother’s camp in the Adirondacks telling another the gossip about a cheating husband. She had been chilled to the bone when she understood they were talking about Bill, her Bill.
    He was involved with a chambermaid.
    She was nauseous with humiliation and panicked enough to tell her mother.
    They had had another of their talks. After her mother had let her get it all out, she had settled Elise down and asked her what she was going to do.
    ”I don’t know, but I can’t stay with him. He betrayed me. And with the help, Mother. He could have spared me that.”
    “Of course he did, my dear,” her mother said, ‘but why would you punish yourself for what he has done? It’s a man’s nature to betray women.
    So why would you give up your very comfortable life just because of that? As I see it, you’ve gotten a better deal with Bill than most women have with their husbands. He still sleeps with you, doesn’t he?”
    “Mother, of course, that’s why I didn’t