1. Fran #2
“Opportunity.” She picks up her fork again, spearing a piece of meat with elegant precision. “Seattle was fine, but there’s nothing like coming home, you know? Reconnecting with old friends.” Her eyes slide to Logan. “People who really know you.”
“I know my husband,” I say, and even as the words leave my mouth, I’m not sure they’re true.
“Of course you do.” Sloane’s smile is back, bright and sharp. “But there’s knowing someone for eighteen months, and then there’s knowing someone your whole life.”
“So I’m learning.” I look at Logan, who has been conspicuously silent through this entire exchange. “Is there anything else I should know about your childhood best friend, or should I just wait for the next surprise?”
He shifts in his seat. “Sloane’s been helping me with a project at the warehouse. Historical research on some of the older Davis designs. She has an art history background.”
“How convenient.” I don’t bother hiding the edge in my voice. “And this research requires dinner at our house because…?”
“Because I invited her.” He meets my eyes for the first time since this conversation started, and there’s something defiant in his expression that makes me want to throw my wine glass at the wall. “Is that a problem?”
The honest answer is yes, it’s a massive problem, you emotionally unavailable disaster of a man. The strategic answer is something calmer, something that doesn’t make me look like the jealous wife in front of the woman who clearly wants my husband.
“Not at all,” I say, choosing strategy over honesty. “I just wish you’d told me. I would have made more food.”
“There’s plenty,” Sloane says, gesturing at the spread. “This is delicious, by the way. You’re quite the cook.”
“Thanks. It’s a family recipe.” I pause. “For my husband’s favorite meal. Which I made specifically for him.”
The silence that follows is deeply satisfying. But then Sloane recovers, launching into stories about their childhood.
“Remember the summer your parents sent you to that woodworking camp?” Sloane is saying, leaning forward with her chin propped on her hand. “You came back and built that entire tree fort in my backyard. My mother nearly had a heart attack when she saw it.”
“It was structurally sound,” Logan says, and there’s actual humor in his voice. “I’d calculated the load-bearing capacity of every branch.”
“You were fourteen. Normal fourteen-year-olds don’t calculate load-bearing capacities.”
“Normal fourteen-year-olds don’t spend their allowance on lumber.”
They both chuckle quietly, a restrained sound from Logan, barely more than a breath, and I sit at the end of the table with my cold short ribs and wonder when I became invisible.
“What about you, Fran?” Sloane turns to me with that too-sweet smile. “What were you like at fourteen?”
“Covered in dirt, mostly.” I push a piece of meat around my plate. “I was already working my grandmother’s garden by then. Learning which flowers could take the cold.”
“How pastoral.” Sloane’s nose wrinkles slightly. “I could never do that. Getting my hands dirty, all those bugs. Give me a nice clean museum any day.”
“Some of us like the dirt.” I look at Logan. “I would have thought a furniture maker would appreciate that. Working with raw materials. Building something from nothing.”
He meets my eyes, and for a second, just a second, I see something flicker there. Recognition, maybe. Or guilt.
“I do appreciate it,” he says quietly. “Your farm is impressive work, Fran.”
“Have you seen it?” Sloane asks, her eyes wide and innocent. “The flower farm?”
Logan hesitates.
“He came once,” I say, answering for him. “Right after we got married. For about an hour.” I smile, and it feels like cracking ice. “He had a meeting.”
The silence stretches long enough to become uncomfortable. Sloane breaks it first with another memory, and then another after that.
Inside jokes I wasn’t there for, memories I can’t share. Logan contributes more words in twenty minutes than he’s given me in entire weeks. She touches his arm once, just briefly, and he doesn’t flinch away.
He flinches when I touch him. In daylight, anyway. Always has.
I push my food around my plate and think about the dinner I planned. The candles I bought. The stupid, stupid hope I woke up with, that maybe tonight would be different, that maybe if I tried hard enough I could make him see me as more than a contract.
“Fran?” Sloane’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You’ve gone so quiet. Everything okay?”
I look up and find her watching me with that same sweet smile, those same sharp eyes. And I know, I know, that she’s asking because she wants to see me squirm. Because somehow, without being told, she’s already figured out exactly where to press.
“Fine,” I say. “Just tired.”
“Oh, of course. Logan mentioned you nap a lot. You must be exhausted.”
She says it like a compliment. It doesn’t feel like one.
I glance at my husband, my husband, the man I’m legally bound to, the man whose bed I share, and he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking at Sloane, with something that might be fondness or might be nostalgia, and either way it’s something I’ve never been able to earn from him.
I excuse myself early. Nobody stops me.
From the top of the stairs, I can hear them still talking, still chuckling softly, and I think about the short ribs I made and the candles I bought and the hope I woke up with.
Six months left on this contract.
I can survive six months. I’ve survived worse.
But when I crawl into bed alone, my dinner untouched on the counter and my husband downstairs with another woman, I finally let myself name the thing I’ve been avoiding for a year and a half:
I’m in love with him.
I’m in love with a man who forgot I existed the second something better walked through the door.
My hand finds the bedroom door and turns the lock, an old-fashioned keyed lock that came with the house, the kind that takes the same key from either side.
I found the spare in the nightstand drawer months ago and started keeping it there, because sometimes a woman needs a door between herself and the world that she controls.
Logan has a key. He’s never had to use it, because I’ve never locked him out.
Tonight, I almost want to.
But I don’t. I unlock it again and lie in the dark, waiting, wondering if he’ll come to bed at all.
And I have no idea what to do about any of it.