Chapter 10
Elise
The week after our almost-perfect Sunday, Bennett tries.
Not perfectly.
But visibly.
He comes home for dinner Monday. On Tuesday, he texts me before a late board call instead of after. Wednesday morning, he asks the name of the teenager whose audition I have been helping with and remembers it at breakfast the next day.
Small things.
Normal things.
Exactly what I asked for.
By Thursday, I have begun to unclench.
That is when the Halcyon anniversary gala takes over the apartment.
The event celebrates fifteen years since the company incorporated. Bennett has been dreading the speech because he hates talking about the early days in public. Investors love mythology. Bennett prefers numbers.
Maren, apparently, loves mythology enough for both of them.
"He cannot say 'we worked hard' and sit down," she tells me over speakerphone Thursday night.
I am at the kitchen island marking bowings on a score. Bennett is in his study. I can hear him pacing.
"Why not?" I ask.
"Because there are eight hundred people coming to hear the founder tell them why any of this matters."
"Money?"
Maren laughs.
"See? This is why I like you."
The sentence should warm me.
It doesn't.
Bennett appears in the doorway, phone in hand.
"You are supposed to be helping me," he says to Maren.
"I am helping. Your wife is funnier."
"Everyone is funnier than me."
He crosses the kitchen and kisses the top of my head.
I look up.
He gives me a small smile.
Progress.
"How long are you two going?" I ask.
"Twenty minutes," Bennett says.
Maren says, "An hour."
They speak at the same time.
Bennett winces.
I close my score.
"Do the hour."
"Elise."
"It's a gala speech, not dinner. I'm fine."
The words leave my mouth too easily.
He notices.
"Are you?"
I look at him.
The old version of us would let me say yes and move on.
"I don't love that she gets your evening again," I admit.
Maren goes silent on speaker.
Bennett's face tightens.
For one humiliating second I wish I could pull the sentence back.
Then he says, "You're right."
Maren clears her throat. "I can send notes."
"No," I say. "You have an event. Finish it. I just don't want to pretend I don't feel anything."
Bennett comes around the island and crouches beside my chair.
"One hour. Then I am done."
"Okay."
He squeezes my knee.
I go upstairs.
At ten forty-five, I wake on the sofa with my book on my chest.
The house is quiet.
Bennett is still in the study.
I walk down the hall and stop outside the partly open door.
He is laughing.
Not the polite investor laugh.
A real one.
Maren's voice comes through the laptop speaker.
"You absolutely cried in the server room."
"I had not slept in three days."
"You cried."
"There was smoke."
"There was one overheated rack."
"It was emotional smoke."
Maren laughs harder.
So does he.
I stand in the dark hallway listening to two people remember a life that existed before there was room for me in it.
This is not betrayal.
Not by the rules most people use.
But intimacy has rules too, even when no one writes them down.
I return to the bedroom without interrupting.
At eleven twenty, Bennett slides into bed.
"You awake?"
I keep my eyes closed.
He waits.
Then kisses my shoulder.
"Good night, Els."
It is the name he used when we were young.
On the drive home from the investor dinner, Bennett keeps one hand over mine.
The city moves around us in expensive silence.
I think about Maren telling him not to drink coffee.
It should be nothing.
It is almost nothing.
That is what makes it so difficult to explain.
"Do you know what I hate?" I ask.
Bennett turns toward me.
"What?"
"That if I tell this story out loud, I sound jealous of coffee."
His face tightens.
"You don't."
"I do."
"No."
"Your COO knows when you grind your teeth."
"Because we've traveled together for years."
"Exactly."
He looks away.
I breathe through the flare of anger.
"This is not me asking you to pretend you don't know her."
"I know."
"Or stop being friends."
"Right."
"Or make work less important."
"I understand."
The repeated phrase sounds different coming from him.
Not resignation.
Concentration.
I look at our joined hands.
"What I don't know is where the marriage ends and Halcyon begins."
He is silent.
"Do you?"
"I thought I did."
"What's the boundary?"
"You're my wife."
"That's a role. Not a boundary."
His thumb stops moving.
I continue.
"If Maren calls at midnight because she's afraid before a board vote, is that work?"
"Usually."
"If she calls because her mother is sick?"
"Friendship."
"If she calls because she can't sleep and needs someone to tell her the vote will be fine?"
He opens his mouth.
Closes it.
There.
The gray area.
The place our marriage has been paying rent for years.
"I don't know," he says.
The honesty cools me slightly.
"I don't either."
The car stops at a light.
He turns fully toward me.
"Have I made you feel like you're competing with her?"
"I don't want to compete."
"That's not what I asked."
I look at him.
Progress can be infuriating.
"Yes."
His face changes.
Pain.
Then defense tries to rise.
I see it.
He swallows it.
"Okay."
"I hate that answer too."
"What should I say?"
"I don't know."
For once, not knowing is allowed to sit between us.
When we reach home, Bennett's phone buzzes in his pocket.
He takes it out.
Maren.
He shows me the screen.
"Do you want me not to answer?"
The question is wrong in a new direction.
"I don't want to manage your boundaries for you."
He winces.
"Right."
He reads the message.
"It's tomorrow's agenda. Not urgent."
Then he puts the phone away.
No announcement.
No performance.
Just a choice.
I watch him hang his coat.
Small things have become enormous because neglect was built from small things too.
Maybe repair will be the same.
My chest aches.
I still let him hold me.