Chapter 2
Bennett set the bottle down too quickly. More wine jumped from the neck and struck the cloth.
He reached for a napkin.
“Leave it,” I said.
His hand stopped.
The stain spread toward the silver. Bennett watched it for a second, visibly fighting the urge to fix the one mess in the room he understood.
Laurel sat very still across from me. “I think I should go.”
“I think you should hear this,” I said.
Bennett looked at me as if I’d broken some private agreement between us. Not the agreement to remain faithful. Apparently that one had become old-fashioned. This was the agreement that I would never make a scene in front of other people.
I opened Elise’s envelope.
Inside were two copies of a single-page document and Elise's note: You don't have to accept terms for a situation you didn't choose. If you do, make sure the same terms apply to both of you.
“What is that?” Bennett asked.
“No partners in this house. Full sexual-health disclosure. No using our relationships to hide what we're doing, no interference with each other's work and no expecting the other person to provide alibis. And identical freedom. Anything you're allowed to do, I'm allowed to do.”
Laurel looked at Bennett.
He didn’t look back.
“Of course,” he said. “That was always understood.”
“Was it?”
“I said this was for both of us.”
His head came up.
There it was.
Not anger yet. Shock.
He had spent a month explaining modern marriage to me and had never once pictured another man taking off my dress.
“Is there someone?” Bennett asked.
“When I asked you that, you said there wasn’t.”
“That’s different.”
Laurel turned toward him. “How?”
“It isn’t. That came out wrong.” He rubbed a thumb over the edge of the paper. “Claire, I don’t think either of us should rush into anything. This is supposed to be thoughtful.”
“You brought a woman with an overnight bag into our home.”
“We were going back to my apartment after dinner.”
Interesting. Whenever I questioned the expense, Bennett called it a short-term corporate rental he needed for work. Now that he needed somewhere to take Laurel, it was suddenly his apartment.
“Then you already have somewhere to go,” I said.
His expression hardened. “I'm not moving out.”
“I said no partners in this house. You brought Laurel here before I agreed to any of this and expected me to approve an affair already underway.”
“It isn't an affair if we're discussing it openly.”
“What do you call the previous ten months?”
“I haven't slept with Laurel in this house.”
He offered the sentence as proof of good character.
I looked at Laurel. She picked up her glass and then seemed to remember where it had come from. She put it down again without drinking.
“Did he tell you I’d agreed?” I asked.
“He said you were taking time to adjust.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“Claire,” Bennett warned.
Laurel ignored him. “He said you’d agreed in principle.”
I turned the document toward Bennett and placed my pen beside it.
“I hadn’t,” I said. “But I’ll agree now, under those conditions.”
He didn’t pick up the pen.
“This is absurd. We shouldn’t need a contract.”
“It isn’t a contract. It’s a record of the rules you wanted us to live by. You’ve spent four weeks asking me to be open-minded. I’m being very open-minded.”
“You’re making it hostile.”
“Then don’t sign it.”
His eyes narrowed. “And what happens if I don’t?”
“I call Elise in the morning and tell her there’s nothing left to discuss.”
The clock on the mantel ticked through the silence. My hands were cold beneath the table. I pressed my fingertips into my palms and kept my face steady.
Bennett glanced at Laurel.
He’d brought her here to witness his honesty. Refusing equal rules in front of her would reveal that honesty had never been the point.
He picked up the pen.
“This trial needs an end date,” he said.
“Either of us can end the arrangement whenever we choose. It’s on the last line.”
“And then we go back to normal?”
“It says either spouse may end the arrangement or the marriage.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No. It isn’t.”
He signed.
I signed beneath him, then slid one copy across the table.
Bennett stared at our names. “Fine. Now can we stop behaving as if I’ve committed some terrible crime?”
“You can pack enough clothes for the week.”
He laughed once. “Excuse me?”
“You’ve already ignored the first boundary by bringing Laurel here. If you want to continue the relationship, you can do it from the apartment.”
“This is my home.”
“Yes. And tonight you chose to bring another woman into it before your wife had consented to anything.”
“You can’t throw me out.”
“I’m not throwing you out. You’re free to stay.” I looked at Laurel’s overnight bag. “Alone.”
Laurel stood and reached for her coat.
Bennett remained in his chair.
For a moment I thought he might let her leave without him. The possibility seemed to occur to Laurel too. Her face closed, and she lifted the strap of her bag onto her shoulder.
“I’ll call a car,” she said.
“No.” Bennett got to his feet. “Give me ten minutes.”
He looked at me, waiting for the relief, the apology, the familiar last-minute effort to keep everyone comfortable.
I gathered the stained napkins and carried them to the kitchen.
Upstairs, drawers opened and closed. Laurel waited in the hall, studying a photograph from our fifteenth anniversary.
Bennett came down with the weekender I'd given him for his fiftieth birthday and told me we'd talk when I'd calmed down.
He left with her and forgot his phone charger beside the sofa. I left it there.