The Song From Cape Cod's Shore
That summer I turned eighteen, at our family’s home on Cape Cod, my father brought his mistress and their illegitimate daughter to my parents’ wedding anniversary party.
When that girl, Sloane, brazenly sat at my mother’s treasured Steinway and played the song that belonged only to my mother, my mother’s spirit shattered. Late that night, she walked into the cold sea off our villa’s coast and never returned.
When I married my husband, Brendan Caldwell, I made one thing solemnly clear: that piano piece was an absolute deal-breaker. Hearing it was grounds for divorce.
He promised me that song would never touch our lives.
Five years later, at a dinner, a business rival from GeneVance, trying to provoke us, had the live jazz band play that very piece.
The moment Brendan heard it, he erupted, storming over to silence the band. That day, for a fleeting moment, I thought I might have found happiness in my marriage, despite my past.
However, just six months later, at a reception celebrating the launch of a gene-targeted therapy I had led, I took the stage. As a “surprise,” the pianist Brendan had hired began to play that song.
And Sloane, the woman who'd driven my mother to her death and destroyed my family, stood at Brendan’s side in a gorgeous haute couture gown, a brilliant smile on her face.
I leveled a cold stare at him, but he just sighed, a dismissive wave of his hand. "Sloane arranged all of this for you. She’s your sister; she wanted to take this chance to reconcile. Don't make a scene in front of the media."
I stared into his eyes for two seconds, then, in front of all the cameras, I turned and walked away.
What sister? I never had one.
And as of that day, I no longer had a husband.