8. Maren
— ? —
Maren
I sit in my car for eleven minutes, watching the kitchen light flicker on. Then the living room, then nothing. He’s tracking my headlights the way I’ve been tracking his flight statuses for years, automatic, habitual, the muscle memory of loving someone you’re not sure you recognize anymore.
My phone has forty-three unread messages. Nora, Nina, my mother, who somehow already knows because my mother has a sixth sense for family catastrophe and a Google alert on Rhodes’s name that she thinks I don’t know about. I haven’t answered any of them.
I grab my purse and walk inside.
Rhodes is standing at the kitchen island like he’s been posed there, still in the same clothes from the photo. The one where he’s smiling at Rachel in the hotel lobby. The one that made me wonder, for the first time in eleven years, if I’ve been the fool in someone else’s love story.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
I set my purse on the counter. Then my phone. Then my keys, one at a time, like I’m disarming myself before a negotiation. Which I suppose I am.
“I waited up,” he says.
“I can see that.”
“Where were you?”
“Driving.” I open the refrigerator, stare at its contents without seeing them, close it again. “Thinking. Trying to figure out what questions I actually want answered versus which ones I’m asking because I think I’m supposed to.”
Rhodes hasn’t moved. He’s watching me the way he watches a deal he’s not sure he can close, careful, calculating, looking for the angle that’ll get him what he wants. I used to find it flattering, that intensity. Now it just makes me tired.
“Ask me,” he says. “Whatever you need to know. I’ll tell you.”
“Will you?”
“Maren.” His voice cracks on my name. “I’ve never lied to you.”
“That’s not actually the same as telling me the truth.” I pull out a chair and sit down, because my legs are shaking and I refuse to let him see it. “But okay, let’s do this. Walk me through it.”
“Walk you through what?”
“The photo. The hotel room. All of it.” I fold my hands on the table like I’m interviewing a job candidate.
“Start from the beginning. Don’t skip anything.
And don’t-” I hold up a hand when he opens his mouth.
“Don’t start with ‘nothing happened.’ I need more than a denial. I need the whole picture.”
He pulls out the chair across from me. Sits.
His hands are flat on the table, and I notice he’s not wearing his wedding ring.
Then I notice it’s sitting by the sink, next to the dish soap, and I remember he always takes it off to wash his hands.
I’ve seen him do it ten thousand times. It means nothing.
Everything means nothing until suddenly it means everything.
“I flew into Denver on Tuesday,” he starts. “You know that. You drove me to the airport.”
“I remember.”
“The meetings ran late. The venue owner wanted to renegotiate the lease terms at the last minute, and Julian was handling the Westbrook deal remotely, so I needed Rachel there to-”
“I don’t need the business context. I need the personal one.”
He stops. Swallows. “Okay. I got back to the hotel around midnight. I hadn’t eaten, so I ordered room service and went over the contracts. Rachel had her own room two floors down. We said goodnight in the elevator.”
“And the next morning?”
“She came to my room at 6:15, with the revised contracts, they’d come through overnight, and we had a 7 a.m. call with the venue owner before his flight.
” Rhodes is speaking carefully now, like every word is a land mine.
“She was there for maybe twenty minutes. The photo was taken when she was leaving.”
“The first photo.”
“Yes.”
“And the second one? The lobby?”
“That was later. After the call. We were heading to the site visit and she said something about the owner’s tie, and I laughed because it looked like something my father would’ve worn in 1987, and-” He stops. “That’s when someone took the picture.”
“The one where you’re looking at her like she just told you the meaning of life.”
“I was laughing at a joke about a tie.”
“You were looking at her, Rhodes.”
“I look at a lot of people.”
“Not like that.” I hear my voice go flat, surgical. “Not the way you used to look at me.”
The silence between us has teeth. He’s staring at me with something between desperation and frustration, and I can see him trying to figure out which response will fix this. Rhodes always thinks there’s a response that’ll fix things. A deal to be made. A solution to be engineered.
Some things can’t be negotiated.
“Nothing happened,” he says finally. “You know that. I know what it looks like, but nothing happened.”
“I believe you.”
He blinks. “You do?”
“I believe you didn’t sleep with her. I believe she was there for twenty minutes to discuss contracts, that the photo in the lobby was about an ugly tie.” I lean back in my chair. “I believe all of it.”
“Then why-”
“Do you actually think I’d cheat on you?”
The question rocks him back on his heels. “What?”
“Answer me. Do you actually think I’m capable of that?”
“No. God, no. Maren, I’ve never-”
“I didn’t either.” I feel the words catch in my throat.
“Then I saw that photo. And for about thirty seconds, Rhodes, I didn’t know.
I looked at that image of another woman walking out of your hotel room, and I didn’t immediately know that you hadn’t touched her.
” My eyes are burning, but I refuse to cry.
Not yet. “Do you understand what that felt like? To doubt you for the first time in eleven years?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not finished.” I stand up because I can’t sit still anymore.
I pace to the window, stare out at our backyard, the garden I planted the spring we moved in, the patio where we’ve hosted a hundred dinners, the life we built together that suddenly feels like it belongs to someone else.
“I’m not angry about the photo. I’m angry that it fit. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the reason I doubted you wasn’t the picture.
It was everything around the picture.” I turn to face him.
“The late nights, the trips, the way everyone at your company talks about Rachel like she’s your other half.
The magazine calling her your partner in building an empire while I arrange flowers for parties I’m not invited to plan.
” I’m pacing now, words tumbling out. “I saw that photo and I thought, well, of course. Of course this is happening, and I didn’t notice.
I’m the wife who arranges the flowers. I’m not even in the room where any of this happens. ”
“That’s not-”
“I’m asking you to stop answering questions I’m not asking.”
He closes his mouth. Waits.
“The question isn’t whether you cheated. The question is how we got here. How we got to a place where I could even wonder.” I sit back down, suddenly exhausted. “Do you know what Nina said to me? When she showed me the first photo?”
“What?”
“She said, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Like she was delivering news of a death. Like it was already a foregone conclusion that my husband was sleeping with Rachel and I was the last person to find out.”
“Nina doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“Everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about, Rhodes. That’s the problem. Everyone sees something I apparently missed, and I’m starting to wonder if the only reason I missed it is because I didn’t want to look.”
He stands up. Comes toward me. Stops a few feet away like he’s not sure if he’s allowed to touch me anymore.
“I’ve never touched Rachel Vaughn,” he says, his voice low and fierce. “I’ve never kissed her, never thought about her that way. She’s my colleague. She’s good at her job. And yes, we spend a lot of time together because we’re building something together, but it’s never-”
“Let me ask you something.” I hold up my hand. “Actually listen before you answer.”
He nods.
“Imagine I had a colleague. A man. We work late together three nights a week. We travel together, separate rooms, of course, but always the same hotel, always the same floor. He texts me in the middle of dinner, knows what I’m thinking before I say it, brings me coffee the way I like it without asking.
The internet writes articles about what a great team we make.
And then one day, someone takes a photo of him leaving my hotel room at 6 a.m.”
I watch his face change. Watch the denial flicker and die.
“Now imagine that when you asked me about it, I told you nothing happened. I told you he was just there to discuss contracts. I told you that you were being unreasonable for even questioning it.” I stand up, and we’re face to face now, close enough to touch. “Would you believe me?”
“Maren-”
“Would you be okay with it? With all of it? The late nights and the travel and the texts and the coffee and the way everyone assumes we’re more than colleagues?”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
“It’s not-” He blows out a breath. “I’m not saying I’d be okay with it. I’m saying I’d trust you.”
“Would you? Really?” I let out a laugh that hurts my throat. “Because I’ve trusted you for eleven years, and I still spent thirty seconds wondering if everything I believed about us was a lie. And I’m not the one who’s given anyone reason to doubt.”
“I haven’t given anyone reason to doubt either.”
“Haven’t you?” I gesture vaguely at the space between us. “The magazine didn’t invent that narrative out of nothing. People don’t assume affairs without material to work with. And I know you didn’t cheat, Rhodes, I believe you, but-”
“But?”
“But ‘I didn’t cheat’ isn’t the same as being a good husband.”
The words hang there, brutal and true.
“What does that mean?”
“It means faithfulness can’t be the only bar you clear, that I need more than the knowledge that you haven’t technically broken our vows.
It means-” I press my palms against my eyes, trying to gather the fragments of what I need to say.
“It means I’m tired of being made to feel unreasonable for noticing boundaries you should have noticed yourself. ”
“What boundaries? I’ve never been inappropriate with Rachel.”
“You work late with her three nights a week.”
“We have demanding jobs.”
“You text her at 11 p.m.”
I’ve been keeping a tally I never meant to keep. It scares me, how long the list has gotten.
“About work.”
“You took her to the Hendricks closing dinner instead of me.”
“That was a business dinner. You hate business dinners.”
“I hate being replaced at them more.” The words come out sharper than I intended.
“I used to be the one who went to those things with you, the one who knew your schedule and your deals and your stress. Now I find out about your trips from your assistant’s calendar invites, and Rachel knows what you’re working on before I do, and I’m-” I stop.
Breathe. “I’m a footnote in your own life story.
And I don’t think you even noticed it happening. ”
“That’s not true.”
“Then tell me what I gave you for your birthday last year.”
His mouth opens, then closes on nothing.
“Tell me the last time we had dinner without you checking your phone. Tell me when we last talked about something that wasn’t logistics, who’s picking up the dry cleaning, who’s handling the insurance paperwork, who’s managing the life we supposedly share.
” I’m crying now, finally, and I hate it.
“Tell me the last time you looked at me the way you looked at her in that lobby photo.”
“Maren.” His voice breaks. “I love you.”
“I know you do.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “That’s the worst part. You love me, and I still feel like I’m disappearing. Like I’ve been disappearing for years, and you never thought to look for me.”
He reaches for me. I step back.
“I need you to hear something,” I say. “Not fix it. Not explain it away. Just hear it.”
He nods.
“I believe you didn’t cheat. I believe nothing physical happened with Rachel.
But I also believe that something happened to us, somewhere along the way, and I don’t know if you even noticed.
” I take a breath. “I’ve been standing next to you for eleven years, Rhodes.
And somewhere in the last three or four, you stopped seeing me.
You stopped asking. You stopped wanting to know what I think or feel or dream about, because I was already handled, already acquired, already yours.
And meanwhile, you built an empire with someone else.
Someone who gets the version of you I used to get, the ideas and the plans and the late-night conversations about what you’re going to do next. ”
“That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not. But it’s true.”
He’s silent a beat too long, and when he answers, his voice comes out raw. “So what do we do?”
“I don’t know.” I grab my phone from the counter. “But I know I can’t figure it out at three in the morning after looking at photos of my husband with another woman all day.”
“Where are you going?”
“Guest room.” I pause at the kitchen door. “I have to be at The Sinclair tomorrow to finish the gala installation. Your gala. For your company. That I’m decorating like a vendor instead of a wife.”
“Maren-”
“Don’t.” I don’t turn around. “I love you too. That’s not the question.”
I’m halfway up the stairs when I hear him say, “Then what’s the question?”
I stop. Turn.
He’s standing at the bottom of the staircase, looking up at me like I’m already gone. Like I’m a ghost he’s trying to convince to stay.
“The question,” I say slowly, “is whether you want a marriage or just someone waiting at home while you build your life somewhere else.” I grip the railing. “Because I’ve been waiting, Rhodes. For years. And I’m starting to think you forgot I was here.”
I walk up the stairs.
Behind me, I hear him sink onto the bottom step. I hear him breathing, ragged and uneven, like he’s just understood he’s been losing what he thought he’d already won.
I close the guest room door.
My phone buzzes. A text from Nora: The flowers are going to be stunning. Whatever else happens, remember that.
I type back: Whatever else happens.
Then I lie down on a bed that isn’t ours, in a room that smells like nothing, and stare at the ceiling until the sun comes up.
At 6:15 a.m. - the exact time Rachel walked out of his hotel room - my alarm goes off.
Time to go make my husband’s party beautiful.