The Wrong Man

The Wrong Man is a short story by Nella Larsen, a leading voice of the Harlem Renaissance.

At a glittering society party, a contented wife suddenly recognizes a figure from her past. Convinced he can expose a secret she has never shared, she is swept into a current of secrecy, fear, and social performance as she scrambles to protect her marriage and standing.

Threading through crowded rooms and quickening conversations, she engineers a private encounter to bargain for silence. The scene tightens into a poised confrontation—until a final turn reveals a case of mistaken identity, casting her frantic calculations in a startling new light.

Larsen’s compact prose and ironic control transform a single night into a study of reputation and self-fashioning, the anxieties of respectability, and how easily desire and memory can mislead us. The result is a taut, stylish tale with an ironic ending that lingers long after the party ends.

"The room blazed with color. It seemed that the gorgeous things which the women were wearing had for this once managed to subdue the strident tones of the inevitable black and white of the men’s costumes. Tonight they lent just enough of preciseness to add interest to the riotously hued scene."