Chapter 4 #3
“If he cheats?” she clarifies.
“Yeah, but if I just leave for seemingly no reason, I mean, they say you get half, but I have never worked, you know like a job outside the house, and Mia will be off to college so it will just be me and my financially noncontributing self. Everything is in his name...and he can pay for the best lawyers. I talked to a lawyer once. I could be left with next to nothing. Which, you know what, is bullshit.”
“If I remember right, you gave up a career in journalism to move here and take care of pretty much everything else,” Paige says, sipping her wine and staring out into the inky air.
“I don’t want it to sound like... I’m making it sound.
.. Those were my choices, and maybe I’m wrong about him,” I say, and then we just listen to the cicadas a moment.
It was my choice. It wasn’t a time when I was expected to be a stay-at-home mom.
But I did tell myself that if life allowed me the stability to make my child my full-time job, nothing could make me happier.
And when I met Finn, somehow the stars aligned.
My own single mother worked squirting perfume at people at a Dillard’s by day and took overnight shifts at Shady Brook Nursing Home at night, spending the weekends on the couch recovering from her stressful week with tumblers of peach Boone’s Farm.
I was able to do the exact opposite. And I get to help people every day.
I get to run charity drives and volunteer.
It seems more useful an existence than shoving a mic in someone’s face just to be the first vulture to get a statement so I can boost my career.
It really does. I’m needed rather than being a success-hungry nuisance to everyone I meet like I might have been in the journalism world.
Paige thinks I just say this to be at peace with the simple life of a so-called housewife, but that’s not true.
I mean it. I have never regretted giving up my career for the life I have.
Now, though, if Finn breaks his side of our promise, his life goes on as it is and I lose it all.
He still has his career, money, the house.
All of it. My contributions are what we agreed was best for our family, but on paper I’m worthless, aren’t I?
It’s incredibly cruel and unjust. The cheating is one kind of betrayal, but being stripped of everything else is quite another.
I sigh and sip my drink, then say, “But I don’t think I am. ”
“What?” she asks.
“Wrong about him. I don’t think I am.”
“Well, you’re not very good at catching him, are you?” Paige says.
“Because I’m probably wrong—just being a paranoid psycho.”
“So wait. Back up a sec. Why would Finn, twentysomething in love, agree to this clause?”
“Mostly because he wanted clauses that said he keeps such and such investment. He was already doing well out of college and wanted to protect his money, so I got to have a clause, too. Also, he knew he was sort of caught with the dorm-room girlfriend, so I almost didn’t marry him at all.
It was a strange negotiation for that age, you’re right, but that’s how it all rolled out over those months when I was ready to walk away from him.
Funny, I thought that him agreeing somehow proved that he didn’t mess around with my friend like he was insisting he didn’t, but.
..now I wonder if he just knew he was really good at sneaking around.
Or maybe that he could easily talk me into staying if he got caught. I don’t know anymore.”
“Sorry, Cor,” she says. What else can she say?
“I actually put away some money to hire a private investigator. God, that’s so crazy, right?”
“But you didn’t do it yet?” she asks.
“No, ’cause I feel like it—I don’t know—crosses, like, a big line. I just—I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe I can help,” she says, looking at me. I turn to look at her, taken aback.
“Uh, really?”
“Grant thinks I need a hobby,” she says, and we both laugh at this. “Maybe some time focusing on something else wouldn’t be a terrible idea.”
“Okay,” I say skeptically. “Not sure how you could help. I’ve tried, like, everything.”
“I’m gonna need you to be open-minded here,” Paige says, with a look like she’s about to deliver bad news. I raise my eyebrows at her.
“Okay...” I say, waiting to hear more.
“I could follow him. I mean, instead of you hiring some stranger you don’t know if you can trust, I could...sort of set a trap.”
“Like, what do you mean? How would you do that?”
“Well, first I’ll follow him—see if I can catch him. If I can’t find anything, then...I try to, you know, make a pass—seduce him. See if he bites,” she says, as if she didn’t just say something shocking. My hand flutters to my mouth, and I feel a surge of nervous energy rush through me.
“Are you kidding?” I ask.
“You want proof? I’ll have a camera and a firsthand account.
Bam!” she says, a little too into this idea.
I think about it for a moment. Paige, with her Pilates body and sweep of long chestnut hair, could probably seduce anyone.
I haven’t consciously felt jealous of her beauty until this very minute, while I’m forced to think of her in bed with Finn. My Finn.
“I won’t actually let it go too far,” she adds, as if reading my mind.
“Just enough to get you what you need.” I don’t ask where those lines lie, exactly.
I just sit in stunned silence for a few minutes.
I want this. I need to know. Would he go as far as to cheat with one of my closest friends?
Would it only take a few drinks and one sexual advance to just throw away everything we have? If so, yeah, I guess I want to know.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s...crazy.”
“Yep,” she says. Spoken like a woman with nothing left to lose in life, which is exactly what she is. “Think about it,” she says, pouring another glass.
We drop the subject and talk about the squirrels stealing from the birdfeeder and how she hopes the sod she laid isn’t too shaded by the oak tree.
I think about how she was so crippled with grief she had to stop working.
She and Grant had a chain of restaurants once upon a time.
They paid for this house in cash and had a cabin in Puget Sound.
They vacationed in Thailand and Fiji. And now?
The one restaurant they kept is keeping them afloat, probably only because the house is long paid off, but the property taxes alone have to be a struggle.
Maybe there’s money I don’t know about, but still, I’d rather pay her than a stranger.
It feels less dangerous somehow—more of an act of solidarity.
And then out of nowhere I blurt, “Okay! Yes!” and she chuckles and takes another sip.
“I’ll pay you the same if you can get proof. ”
“You only pay me if I get it, though,” she says.
“Okay,” I agree. I’d have it to spare if this all goes down the way I pray it won’t. My hands are trembling, and I should tell her no, that this is absolutely insane, but I think it might be my only shot. So I shakily raise my glass and clink it against hers.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m in.”