Chapter 3
At midnight, I stripped the dining table.
The wine had soaked through the linen and left a damp red shadow on the wood beneath it. I carried the cloth to the laundry room, sprayed the stain and watched the foam turn pink.
There were professionals who could remove red wine from antique linen. I knew three of them.
I put the tablecloth in the sink instead.
My mother had taught me to soak wine in cold water and salt.
The morning after my wedding, we'd stood at this sink laughing as a stain faded from the same cloth.
The memory made me grieve the woman who believed every ruined thing could be saved if she acted quickly enough. I poured salt over the new stain.
The memory didn't make me want Bennett back. It made me grieve the woman who had believed every ruined thing could be saved if she acted quickly enough.
Upstairs, Bennett's side of the closet looked almost untouched. He'd taken two suits, three shirts, underwear and the navy sweater Laurel once complimented during a dinner I hadn't attended. I knew about the compliment because he'd repeated it to me.
At the time, I'd been pleased someone noticed the sweater. I'd chosen it. His toothbrush was gone.
A pink smear marked a white hand towel. I didn't wear that shade.
Once I started looking, I found hazelnut coffee neither of us drank, a charging cable behind the guest-room nightstand and long black hairs in my dining-chair brush.
None proved sex had happened there. They proved Laurel had been comfortable in my home when I wasn't.
I sat on the edge of our bed with my phone in my hand.
Bennett had slept with me the previous Sunday, then asked whether I'd reconsidered his proposal. I booked the first available sexual-health screening.
Then I sent the photographs to Elise.
Her reply arrived less than a minute later.
Don't clean out accounts, change locks or destroy anything. Sleep if you can. Call me at eight.
I typed, I wasn't planning to destroy anything.
She sent back, You host events. You own twelve kinds of solvent.
Despite everything, I laughed.
The sound startled me in the empty bedroom.
I took my pillow and went downstairs. I couldn't bear the thought of sleeping on his side, and mine felt like the place where the wife who didn't know anything belonged.
At one thirty, I lay along the sofa with a blanket over my knees and opened the Table Six group chat.
Bennett brought Laurel home. Overnight bag included. He's staying at the apartment now.
Evelyn called before I'd put the phone down.
“Do you want me there?”
“It's late.”
“That wasn't my question.”
“No,” I said. “I need one night where nobody needs anything from me.”
“You don't have to take care of me if I come over.”
“I know. That's why I can tell you not to.”
She asked if I was safe and stayed on the phone for nearly an hour.
Afterward, I stripped the sheets, remade the bed and slept diagonally across it for two hours. Nobody complained about my cold feet.
My alarm pulled me awake at seven fifty-five.
At eight, Elise confirmed the prenup protected Rowan Events and the house I'd bought before the marriage. Shared assets still needed sorting, but the apartment lease was Bennett's.
“His expensive attempt to look clever has made your life simpler,” she said. “Document everything and stop providing the services that made this feel like home.”
I did.
By nine, I'd removed Bennett from the grocery delivery, canceled the dry-cleaning pickup for his shirts and forwarded his mother's birthday reminder to him. Then I emailed my staff about the annual summer supper.
It would go ahead in three weeks, exactly as planned.
The guest list belonged to me. The caterer was my friend. The garden had been planted for it, and I refused to let Bennett turn another table into his stage.