Chapter 1 – Cora #4
“Do you think that makes it better?” I ask. I was wrong. I do have a script, although I don’t know where I got it, maybe from friends who dated losers in high school or TV or the posts I read on social media where a sad woman asks for advice about an awful man.
“I do. Don’t you?”
What is this? Isn’t he supposed to say that he knows that it doesn’t make it better and then give me some excuse about how he was drunk or he’s been under so much stress?
I don’t know how to answer him, so I skip to the next line that my media-saturated brain helpfully suggests. “How could you?”
And yeah, how could he? Everything was good. Better than ever. We were happy. Weren’t we?
His idle crocodile eyes harden. “Come on, Cora. Can we cut the shit? What is it that you want? What do you need that you aren’t getting?”
“What do you mean?” Is he offering to pay me off if I let it go? That’s bonkers. Money can’t turn back time.
And what does he mean by what do I need?
I don’t need anything. Our staff buys all the essentials, and I have a black credit card if I want something for myself.
He says it has no limit, but my mind can’t fathom that—it’s unsettling—so I set myself a budget of five hundred dollars per month for me and two thousand for the kids. I hardly ever spend it all.
“You can drop the pretense. You came here to force a confrontation, and you’ve succeeded.
You’ve embarrassed our people, dragged the children out of their beds and disrupted their routine.
So, what is the issue? You have my attention.
What is it that you want?” His voice is as smooth and cold as the frozen Hudson.
It sounds like gaslighting—from anyone else it would be gaslighting—but I think he’s serious. He’s talking to me like he talks to the people he works with.
Usually, people are most themselves at home, and they put on a mask for everyone else, but I’ve always thought, since the day I met Adrian, that he’s most himself at work.
He’s comfortable giving orders and receiving reports, he thrives negotiating and outsmarting his competition, but he’s awkward as hell hanging around the house with his family.
That’s one of the reasons I love him. He treats the kids and me like exotic pets that he’s dedicated himself to care for, but he’s also wary of us, although he tries to play it off. I thought we were teaching him how to be loved, since he came from such a bad home.
But maybe it wasn’t awkward for him. Maybe he was bored. Maybe he hated it.
“I don’t understand,” I say carefully.
He scoffs, but in a classy way, like a man who’s hashing out a deal. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.” I meet his eyes and keep my body absolutely still.
I understand already that he doesn’t love me.
I knew that the second I saw those red soles, and it’s sunk in enough now that it’s frozen my bones.
But what I need to know, desperately, is how wrong I’ve been.
How deep is the hole I’ve dug for myself?
“Cora, obviously, you heard Delaney on the phone. You suspected what you would be walking into. This is the situation you facilitated. You tell me what needs to happen to make this go away.”
“I didn’t know,” I argue.
I heard music and a woman calling his name, but I didn’t know anything.
I was afraid, so I came to him because, apparently, the habit of a lifetime can be erased in five short years, and instead of assuming the worst and planning accordingly, I believed that I’d see him and all my worries would be unfounded.
Because I’m stupid. Unforgivably stupid.
He levels me with the gaze he uses with the men we run into at galas and fancy restaurants, the ones rich enough to approach him with impunity and make veiled taunts that make his jaw twitch. His competitors.
“Let’s drop the pretense. It’s just you and me here. You heard Delaney, and you saw an opportunity and took it. I don’t fault you. We all have to look after ourselves.”
I know that—better than he does, I bet—but I’d forgotten. He’d made me forget. “I don’t want anything.” Nothing he can give me now. “Why did you do it? Are you bored with me?”
A brief flash of annoyance crosses his face, but it’s gone in a blink.
He considers me for a few seconds with that reptilian coolness.
“Cora, when I met you, you were a twenty-one-year-old, glorified babysitter. You’d never even taken a college-level course.
You could not possibly have believed this was love at first sight. ”
I’ve been beaten before, jumped, casually smacked around.
I know how to take a hit. You can’t tense up; you have to give.
You can do it in your brain, too. You snatch away all the things in the path of the words—what you wanted, what you hoped, all the things you thought were true.
You sweep them away and let the words land on blank space. I’m very good at it.
I haven’t really had to do it since I got to New York, but it’s like riding a bicycle. You don’t forget.
Adrian keeps speaking, and I hear him, but the words are gnats splatting on the windshield.
“This has always been a transaction.” He gestures between us.
“All relationships are transactional. I give you an easy life, and you give me children. Anything else is outside the scope of your concern. My private life has no bearing on this marriage. It doesn’t affect your day-to-day in any way.
” He leans forward, his eyes somehow sharpening.
“But hear me when I say that I expect you to negotiate on even terms. If you want something, come to me. I will not tolerate you using the children as leverage.”
I didn’t use the children. But I could have left them home. I should have. It was late. But I was scared, and I didn’t want to come here alone because that would mean I had a real reason to be worried. I shouldn’t have brought them. I swore when I had Pearl that I’d never let a bad thing touch her.
“I’d never hurt the children,” I mutter to my lap. I can’t look at him anymore. I can’t be here.
“I didn’t say you would.” He’s quiet for a moment and then sighs.
“The past several years have been a nice interlude, but I think this is actually for the best. It’s better to deal plainly with each other.
You married me so that I’d take care of you.
” He speeds up like he’s cutting off an objection, but I’m not saying anything.
I’m staring at the perfectly smooth fabric of my wool slacks.
“I don’t fault you. I know that your life growing up must’ve been beyond difficult.
But we don’t need to keep up the pretense anymore that this is more than what it is. ”
“What is it?”
“Well, some would say it’s a very traditional marriage.” A note of wry amusement enters his voice. I want to reach into his throat, grab his esophagus, wrap it around my wrist, and yank it out like a rip cord. I can see myself doing it in my mind, as clear as day.
Oh, shit.
I’m in trouble.
“You can be assured that I don’t have affairs,” he continues. “There will be no rumors online or embarrassing pictures.”
“Having sex with another woman isn’t an affair?”
“No,” he answers, like the question is silly.
“Is she the only one?” Blood is rushing to my head. I’m talking and sitting here, very politely, while the room around me cracks and floats into the stratosphere, and Adrian doesn’t know it. He doesn’t know me at all.
He takes a second to reply. “I’ll satisfy your curiosity this once, but I’ll remind you—you signed the prenup.
You know what happens if our arrangement doesn’t work out.
I suggest that once we clear the air, you take whatever time you need, and you find it within yourself to move past this.
” He pauses as if he’s calling something to mind.
“If you like, we can arrange for a few weeks at that holistic wellness retreat Kendra went to in Switzerland.”
Kendra is my sister-in-law. She’s always stressed out, and she says it’s because she’s so busy, but I see how she tenses up around her husband Gideon. I always thought I got the better brother. I felt bad for her.
Adrian clears his throat. I guess he wants me to answer him.
I did sign the prenup, but I didn’t read it.
My lawyer summed it up for me, and to be honest, except for a few details that stuck with me because I thought they were funny—like me keeping my security detail if we divorce like I’m a former president of the United States—it went in one ear and out the other.
I was twenty-one. I was worried about not looking stupid in front of my fancy lawyer.
“Okay,” I say to put an end to the silence. I feel like I’ve been caught by loss prevention, like I’ve been made to turn out my pockets in a back storeroom, and the universe is about to confiscate everything that protects me—my new name, my wedding ring, that black credit card.
“There’s no one else.” He pauses and then plunges on, his voice never wavering and without a hint of guilt or regret. “I used protection, obviously. This isn’t a threat to you. You’re my wife and the mother of my children. You’ve read the prenup. You’re well-protected.”
I’m not. I’m all alone and floating into outer space. My hands are cold as ice. I shove them under my thighs like I’m a little kid. My vision is getting weird now. I can see the weave of the fabric of my pants. This is going to be bad.
“Cora, please look at me.”
I can’t. My head weighs a thousand pounds. It’s about to slide off my neck like the clock in that Salvador Dali painting.
“Cora.” His voice is firm. He fully expects me to obey. Everyone does what Adrian Maddox says. He doesn’t even have to raise his voice.
If this was an hour ago—if this was five minutes ago—I would’ve followed his directions, but it’s too late. The tether that attaches my mind to the rest of me has snapped.
I’m in deep trouble now.