Chapter 2 – Cora #2
“Cora?” Adrian defers to me. That’s a first. He always chooses the wine. I know nothing about it, and besides, for a good percentage of our marriage, I’ve been pregnant, so I wasn’t drinking. I’m nursing now, but I pump so I can have a glass at dinner if I want.
“Whatever you want.” I’m proud that my voice comes out even.
Adrian immediately says, “The Montrachet then.” He always knows what he wants.
Vera pours straightaway. Thank goodness there’s no host taste at home.
Adrian has explained on several occasions the history and reasons behind it, but I always feel embarrassed by the swirling and sniffing and swishing around.
I know it’s normal for people like him, but it feels pompous.
When we’re out, I’ve taken to excusing myself to the bathroom when I see the bottle coming.
Minh slides a plate in front of me with perfectly portioned, artfully arranged food. I recognize salmon under a glaze. There is also a dollop of yellow mush and a handful of burnt green beans.
“Steelhead salmon with pistachio pesto, corn puree, and charred string beans,” Minh murmurs as he circles the table to serve Adrian.
“Excellent,” Adrian says, snapping his napkin to unfold it and lay it across his lap.
Minh dips his head and slips out the door, leaving us alone.
Table manners were one of the first things I had to learn to be with Adrian Maddox.
In the movies, they hire some stuck-up lady to teach the trashy upstart some manners, but in my case, Adrian coached me.
He’d catch my eye, and with subtle exaggeration, he’d do whatever it was that I was supposed to do—switch to a different fork, clean my fingers in the little bowl, put my napkin on my lap.
I watched him like a baby duckling. He was so patient. So discreet. I thought he wanted to spare me embarrassment, but I guess he was training his trophy wife. That’s what I am, right?
I leave my napkin on the table, grab my glass of wine, and drain it.
The corners of Adrian’s mouth turn down. Guess he doesn’t like me chugging my Montrachet.
It feels oddly good, almost a physical relief, to displease him.
How would it feel to make him mad?
I shove my chair back, and it screeches satisfyingly on the hardwood. I forget about my cut-up soles for a second, so I hiss when my foot lands on the floor, but it’s only two more steps to grab the bottle from Adrian’s side of the table. I return to my seat and refill my glass to the brim.
Adrian lowers his fork to his plate with great deliberation. “Do you have something you want to get off your chest, Cora?”
I hate Adrian the stuck-up businessman. I didn’t realize until this moment, now that he’s gone, but the old Adrian, the one I created in my head, always seemed kind of watchful when he was alone with me and the kids.
He wasn’t quite nervous, but he didn’t have that commanding persona, either, that he has around other people.
It was like he couldn’t quite make the girls and me out, so he treaded very carefully.
He moved slowly. Always spoke in a measured, calm voice.
But that was a figment of my imagination, wasn’t it? The real Adrian isn’t curious about us. He wants to fuck the red-haired lady from work and come home to eat dinner with a wife who pretends that she doesn’t know what he’s been doing.
How did I misread things so badly?
“You seem to have something you want to say,” he prompts.
“Nope,” I say and drain my glass again.
His slight frown becomes a mocking ghost of a smile. “Surely, we can be adults about this.”
“Surely,” I agree, grab the bottle, and chug.
The ghost smile disappears.
“How was the children’s day?” he asks, ignoring my guzzling. For some reason, he always asks about their day, not about them, not by name. I always thought it was a rich people thing. Now, it strikes me like a question you’d ask the nanny.
“Twenty-four hours, same as yours.”
“Cora.” There’s a note of warning in his voice. What is he going to do? Ruin my life again?
“Adrian,” I sass back.
He really is unfairly handsome. He has all these features I didn’t even know I found sexy until I met him.
I love his neck—the tendons, his Adam’s apple, the ridge of his collarbone.
I love his chiseled jaw and how it makes him look so strong and powerful, and how that makes me feel shivery and safe at the same time.
I love his hands, and how even though his nails are trimmed and buffed at a salon, the veins that run from his wrist to his knuckles, and his callouses from rowing, still make him look like a man who can handle himself.
Loved, I guess. Past tense. I look at him, and the dopey, dizzy glow I always felt when he came into a room is totally gone. Like someone flicked off a switch.
I see now that he’s handsome like a villain, the kind they spring on you in the third act, the guy who’s been behind the trouble all along. He’s a Prince Hans.
I set the bottle down with a thump. “Why act like you cared? Why didn’t you tell me this transaction stuff before we got married?”
His left eye twitches the tiniest bit. “Don’t you think it would’ve been gauche to hash it out ourselves? We have lawyers. And it was understood, wasn’t it? You signed the prenup.”
No, I didn’t understand. I was a sucker. And after everything I went through growing up—Mrs. Flowers would shake her head at how dumb I’ve been.
I sigh and pick up my fork to poke at the salmon. No, she wouldn’t call me dumb. She was always kind, and she never let you be down on yourself or stay hung up on the negative. She’d say something like at least you know what love felt like. A lot of people never find out.
My vision blurs. The tears are for her, and it kills me that he might think they’re for him. I widen my eyes and blink until they go away.
A tic appears at the hinge of Adrian’s jaw. He lets out a breath and stands in one fluid motion. “I thought you’d be ready to discuss this like adults. I was obviously mistaken. Perhaps this will go a way toward helping you regain a sense of perspective.”
He drops a key fob next to my plate as he strides out of the room, leaving his plate untouched. He bought me a car. I bet it’s expensive.
He always buys me expensive gifts—jewelry and perfume and spa days and electronic gadgets.
Most of the electronics are still in the box.
Those little instruction booklets are incomprehensible, and I don’t have the patience to watch an online video about sunglasses that take pictures and search the internet when my phone works fine.
I don’t wear the perfume or the jewelry much, either, except when we go to events. I was always grateful for the gifts, and impressed, but I figured he just wasn’t good at picking out personal things, and he was doing the best he could by throwing money at it.
Except for that bouquet of irises. That was out of character.
He has roses delivered every Friday like clockwork—they have a special place on a marble side table in the foyer—but last week, out of nowhere, he brought home a little bouquet of irises and other blue and yellow wildflowers, tied with a blue and yellow striped bow.
I’m pretty sure it was meant to show support for Ukraine.
Adrian said the colors reminded him of me, even though my hair is a paler yellow.
Instead of putting the flowers in the usual vase, I pressed them in the heaviest book I could find in the library—Plato’s collected works. I had planned to frame them once they’re dry and flat. Or maybe do some kind of resin craft, like coasters.
Did he bring me the flowers because he’d just fucked Delaney and felt guilty?
Probably not. He doesn’t seem to feel guilty at all. He seems frustrated that I’m not falling in line.
What did he expect? He couldn’t have thought that I’d just shrug and get over it. He’s cold, but he understands how people work. Outsmarting people is his entire job. Maybe I was supposed to break down and cry. Maybe he wanted to see me hurt.
I really had no idea he was a villain. In my experience, bad men talk sweet.
They stand too close and breathe too heavily and always have a ready excuse.
They never set their phones down, and they show up where you don’t expect them—in the basement, standing by the dryer when the buzzer goes off on your load of laundry.
Or after you stay late at school to watch a basketball game and you’re walking home in the dark.
Adrian was never sweet, but he always kept his word and never pressured me, and that meant so much more to me than compliments.
He was a gentleman. He didn’t do more than kiss me on our first date, and he didn’t try to fuck me until the third.
When I only let him feel me up, he didn’t act put out.
I got the sense that I’d pleased him by turning him down.
I thought that meant he was serious about me. That he felt a connection. Maybe even the same giddy excitement that made it hard for me to eat and sleep.
I was worse than stupid.
I was crazy.
He’s right. I should have known.
I was twenty-one, making minimum wage. He was thirty-three and a literal billionaire. And I let my messed-up brain hum along on the high, never questioning, never doubting the lies I told myself. And I brought two innocent babies into this.
I blink at the empty bottle of wine.
I want to rip the hair out of my head.
I want to shove myself into the smallest box on the planet, fold myself over and over, flatten my organs and break my bones until I’m a tiny cube in a corner on a shelf in the back of a room where no one ever goes.
I’ve made a terrible mistake, and there is no Mrs. Flowers, and no Ativan, and two little girls are sleeping upstairs, and they need me, and I’m holding on by a thread. I don’t know what to do, but I can’t lose it.
I can’t let myself float away.
I sweep my arm across the table, sending my plate flying into the wall.
It doesn’t even break. It falls upside down on the teak floor, clattering as it comes to a rest. I send the wine bottle after it like I’m throwing an axe.
Adrian and I did that on a date once. He was impressed by my aim, but he always got closer to the bullseye than me.
Racing footsteps pound down the hall and Minh appears in the doorway, his untied apron sailing behind him like a cape. “Mrs. Maddox! What happened?”
I wipe my palms on my pants and straighten my shoulders. “I tripped.”
Minh takes in the blast radius, the green beans and fish chunks scattered among shards of glass, and his forehead furrows.
“Cora?” His voice is low. Gentle. Minh is my favorite chef.
He doesn’t mind me messing up his kitchen making baby food for Winnie or baking little treats with Pearl.
The weekend chef doesn’t like us underfoot.
He’d never say so, but you can tell by how hard he shuts the cabinets when I’m in his space.
“I tripped,” I say again, more firmly. The floaty feeling has quieted, and my head is clearer. My aching feet are firm on the ground.
More steps pound down the hall, and Vera and Adrian burst into the room. Vera gasps.
“What on earth happened?” Adrian thunders. I jerk. I’ve never heard him shout before.
Minh is already squatting, using the plate to scrape the glass into a pile. Before I can open my mouth, Minh says, “Mrs. Maddox tripped. No worries. I’ve got it.”
“I’ll get the broom,” Vera says and hurries away.
I take a step away from the mess.
“Watch yourself,” Adrian growls at me. “It’s everywhere.” He grabs me by the waist, hoists me into the air like I’m Pearl, walks me into the hallway, and places me back down on my feet.
“Are you hurt?” he demands, scowling as he crouches to smooth his hands down my legs, checking for glass. Like he cares.
“No,” I say. He’s on his knees in front of me, and all I can see is the thick, dark hair on top of his head and his broad shoulders.
He smells like his fancy body wash that comes in an ordinary plastic bottle with a label that’s just a long list of ingredients and costs sixty bucks for thirty-two ounces.
When he’s away for a night or two, I unscrew the lid and sniff it when I’m in the shower. Even after five years together, I still longed for him when he was gone.
Was he fucking someone else whenever he was away?
The hate I feel for him is incandescent. How is it not lighting the hallway like an A-bomb?
I reach out and let a strand of his silky hair run through my fingers. “Stop pretending. You don’t care if I’m hurt,” I tell him. “You’re my enemy. I know that now.”
He looks up at me. His dark eyes blaze. His jaw locks. He’s so beautiful. Even now, something inside me urges me to soothe him, stroke his cheek, sink to my knees and wrap my arms around him.
Something inside me is a traitor.
I turn around and walk away, spine straight, careful not to betray the pain I feel each time my soles meet the floor.