Chapter Two

He acted like the thirty days were a minor inconvenience.

That's what got me. He sat across from me at the breakfast table the next morning with his coffee and his phone and his perfectly pressed shirt and he listened to my terms with the patient expression of a man reviewing a contract he'd already decided to sign. Polite and detached, like I was a colleague presenting quarterly projections rather than his wife telling him what she needed from the last thirty days of their marriage.

I'd stayed up until two writing the list. It covered a full page and a half. My handwriting got smaller toward the bottom, the way it always does when I'm feeling something I can't quite hold.

I slid it across the table without a preamble.

He looked at it. Didn't touch it. "What is this?"

"Every promise you broke," I said. "And a few things I just want. Nothing extravagant: a dinner, a movie, the amusement park you've canceled twice. Small things." I wrapped both hands around my mug. "I want you to show up, Ethan. Actually show up. That's the whole question."

He read through the list slowly. Something moved across his face, I couldn't tell if it was guilt or logistics. With him it was sometimes hard to distinguish.

"The Calliope concert," he said. "You bought tickets again?"

"I did."

"Natalie…"

"You promised," I said quietly. Not an accusation. Just a fact. "You've been promising for two years. This is the last time I'll ask."

He set the list down, picked up his coffee and could see him running the calculation again, thirty days, minor obligations, clean exit. From his perspective it probably seemed like a reasonable trade. He had no idea what it actually meant. That was fine. He didn't need to.

"All right," he said. "I'll honor the list."

"There's one more thing."

He looked up.

"No Vivienne, not during this month. Whatever you two have, pause it. The thirty days are mine." I held his gaze. "You gave them to me. I'm holding you to that."

The silence stretched. I watched something work through his expression; resistance, then the quiet recognition that he owed me at least this. He'd owed me more than this for years.

"Fine," he said.

What he didn't tell me, what I wouldn't find out until later was that he'd texted her before he even came downstairs that morning.

[She wants thirty days. Some sentimental goodbye thing. I'll be out by the end of the month.]

I found the message four days later when his phone lit up on the kitchen counter while he was in the shower and I saw her name and I couldn't stop myself. I know how that sounds. I'm not proud of it. But I looked, and what I saw wasn't the message from four days ago.

What I saw was her response: She's pathetic, just end it now.

And beneath it, his reply, three words that I have thought about more times than I'd like to admit: It's almost done.

I put the phone back exactly where it was. I finished making his coffee. I set it on the counter for when he came downstairs.

Almost done. Five years of my life, and that's what it was to him. Almost done.

I went to my room and I sat on the edge of the bed and I pressed my hands flat on my thighs and I breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my mother taught me when I was seven and afraid of thunderstorms.

You're not going to fall apart, I told myself. Not over this. Not over them.

I meant it, mostly.

That afternoon, I called Marlowe's and made the reservation for Saturday.

The woman on the phone had a warm, professional voice. "Name for the reservation?"

I hesitated for just a second. "Cole," I said. "Natalie Cole."

When I hung up I sat there staring at my phone and I thought about the woman who'd taken Ethan's last name five years ago with her whole heart. Who'd been so certain she was building something that would last.

I thought about her with a tenderness that surprised me. Like she was someone I used to know.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

[Hi, this is Vivienne. We should talk. Woman to woman.]

I stared at the message for a long time.

She had my number. Of course she did.

My thumb hovered over the screen. Block, reply or Ignore. Three options, three very different versions of how this story could go from here.

I turned the phone face-down.

Saturday first, I thought. One thing at a time.

But I didn't sleep well that night. And the night after that was worse.

Because on Sunday morning, I looked out the kitchen window and saw Ethan in the driveway, leaning against his car, phone to his ear. Laughing again. That same laugh.

And this time he was looking directly at our bedroom window while he did it.

Like he'd already moved out and just hadn't told me yet.