Chapter 5
Grant comes home with flowers.
This is how I know he is worried.
My husband has not bought me flowers without an assistant or calendar reminder in five years. He used to say flowers were a poor investment because they died immediately, which is a brave opinion from a man who has spent marital money on another woman's rent.
The arrangement is white tulips, wrapped in the paper sleeve from the bodega by our building.
Sasha gets peonies.
I get panic tulips.
"Hey," he says, stepping into the kitchen with easy confidence. "You didn't answer much today."
"Busy."
"I figured." He sets the flowers on the island. "Thought these might help."
"With work?"
"With whatever mood this is."
There he is.
Not cruel, exactly. Cruel would take effort. Grant is careless with a nice voice, which is worse because people keep handing him credit for tone.
I look at the tulips.
"Thank you."
He waits for more.
I give him nothing.
Grant loosens his tie. His main phone is in his hand. The second phone is in a Faraday sleeve inside a locked evidence bag at Geneva's office, and that gives me more comfort than any prayer I have ever heard.
"Are we okay?" he asks.
The question is so late it should pay a fee.
"Are we?"
He sighs. "Audra."
"Grant."
"I am trying to check in."
"I can see that."
"Do you have to make it difficult?"
I almost smile. Not because anything is funny, but because the pattern is suddenly visible. Grant withholds for months, then arrives with grocery-store flowers and wants applause for noticing the house is cold.
He does not know I have seen the other version of him.
The one who sends voice notes. The one who remembers mugs. The one who misses a woman before the elevator reaches the lobby.
"I'm tired," I say.
"You've been working too much."
"Have I?"
"You do this. You get buried in other people's divorces, and then you bring that energy home."
There it is. The preview.
Cold wife. Overworked wife. Suspicious wife. Woman who sees fraud because she works with fraud.
He is already building the story where I am the problem.
He moves around the island and opens the cabinet where we keep plates for guests, not dinner, because Grant has never known which cabinet belongs to daily life. Sasha probably has labeled shelves. Sasha probably has the blue mug on a hook and Grant's favorite cereal in a glass jar.
That image should not hurt.
It does.
"I talked to Ken today," he says.
"Congratulations."
"He and Marissa handled their separation well. Quietly. No ugly surprises. They both kept their friends."
"Did Marissa know quiet was the plan, or did Ken decide that for both of them?"
Grant stills for half a second.
Too small for anyone else.
Plenty for me.
"What?" he says.
"Nothing. Just curious who benefits from all that quiet."
He shuts the cabinet with careful restraint.
"You are being sharp."
"I have range."
"I am trying to spare us both pain."
That one almost gets a laugh out of me.
Not because it is funny.
Because the man who caused the pain is now concerned about sparing me from it.
I pull a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water.
"Maybe I have been bringing too much home."
His shoulders relax. A fraction, but I catch it. Men who lie for a living should not marry women trained to read small reconciliations in bank statements and posture.
"That's all I'm saying," he says. "Maybe we both need to be honest about what this marriage has become."
I drink the water.
"What has it become?"
Grant rubs his jaw. He looks pained now. Handsome. Regretful. Ready for a camera he thinks is on his side.
"A partnership. A good one in some ways. But not the marriage it should have been. I think you know that."
I know many things.
"Do I?"
"Come on. We haven't been happy for a long time."
We.
The most convenient pronoun in the English language.
"And what do you want to do about that?" I ask.
He looks at the tulips, then back at me.
"I think we should talk about separating. Kindly. Before it turns ugly."
Before I find the phone, he means.
Before Sasha gets impatient enough to post a soft-focus kitchen photo with his watch on the counter.
Before the apartment, the ring, the trips, and the rent become numbers with exhibits attached.
"Kindly," I say.
"Yes."
"And what does kind look like to you?"
Grant takes a breath. He has rehearsed this. I can tell by the solemn angle of his eyebrows.
"We don't punish each other. We don't drag lawyers into every corner. We split what makes sense. You keep your retirement. I keep mine. You keep the house, obviously, but we account for the marital equity. No public drama."
"You mean the house I bought before I married you," I say. "The house in my name."
"Audra."
"No, I'm curious. In your quiet version, do I keep my house and write you a check on the way out?"
He blinks.
"What?"
"Nothing."
I set the glass down.
That was too close. A little blood through the bandage. Geneva would narrow her eyes at me.
Grant steps toward me.
"Audra, I don't want us to become one of your cases."
I study him while he says it.
His face is open, wounded, handsome enough for people to trust at charity dinners. He has practiced being the reasonable man until the expression fits without pinching. Anyone else would see a husband trying to avoid a fight.
I see a negotiation position.
He wants me to agree to the premise before I see the price. That is the trick. Make the marriage sound tired. Make the divorce sound mutual. Make my silence sound mature. Make his second life sound like an unfortunate overlap between two adults who had already drifted apart.
Then I become the woman who punishes happiness because she cannot admit her marriage died.
No.
I can audit that too.
I look at him.
For a second, I see the man I married. Not the second-phone version. Not the public broker. The younger man in a cheap suit who brought me deli coffee during tax season and said he loved how my brain worked.
Maybe he meant it then.
Maybe he did not.
Either way, he learned to use what he admired.
"Then don't behave like one," I say.
His face changes.
Not much.
Enough.
"I don't know what that's supposed to mean."
"I know."
I take the tulips from the island and put them in the sink. Not the trash. The sink. I am angry, not theatrical.
Grant watches me.
"That's unnecessary."
"So were the flowers."
His phone rings.
He looks down too fast.
He does not answer.
He does not need to.
I saw the name before he turned the screen away.
Sasha.