My Husband Wouldn't Sign, So He Gets Thirty Days of My Life novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty Days

In front of twelve children and their parents Max demands she come home; Aubrey names her terms: thirty days of her day, no staff, no touching, then he signs.

Thad let go of me slowly, so no one could say he'd jumped.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Thad. I run the place. You're dripping on my floor."

Max did not look at him.

"Aubrey. Car. Now."

"No."

I said it quietly and I watched it hit him.

In six years I had never said that word to him in that voice.

"Get your bag," Max said.

"No, Max."

Behind him, the side door opened again, and a mother came in with a boy of about seven carrying a violin case.

She stopped when she saw us.

Another family came in behind her, and then a little girl with her front teeth missing.

Three more children followed, and a grandfather with a thermos.

It was 4:45 on a Monday.

Lessons started at five.

The hall began to fill with people who were pretending not to listen.

"We can't do this here," Max said, lower.

"You chose here," I said. "You tracked my phone."

"It was on my plan," Max said.

"It was on your mother's plan, and she cancelled it, and you found me anyway."

He did not answer that.

His eyes went to Thad again.

"Who is this?"

"I told you. A friend."

"The friend with a house?" Max said, and for the first time his voice had an edge. "The friend with a cello?"

"Those were your mother's words," I said. "You were sitting right there."

He did not argue with that.

"I came to bring you home," Max said.

"I don't have a home," I said. "I have a floor in your mother's house with a bell on it."

A father near the stage cleared his throat and started tuning a violin too loudly.

Thad folded his arms and leaned on the edge of the stage.

"For the record," he said, "I'm happy to be the friend with the house. It's got a radiator."

Max turned to him at last.

"Do you have any idea who I am?"

"I know exactly who you are," Thad said. "You're the man whose wife just played Bach on a lost-and-found cello for eleven bars and cried about it."

Nobody in the hall breathed.

Max looked at me.

"You played?" he said.

"For eleven bars."

"I didn't know you could."

"You didn't know I could," I said, "because for six years you never asked what was in the case."

His face changed.

It did not break.

It closed, which is what it does when someone has said something true that he can't answer.

"Come home and we'll talk about it," he said.

"You said that last Christmas," I said.

"Aubrey."

"And in March, and in June."

"I am asking you to come home," Max said.

"You are telling me to come home," I said. "Every time, in a tone, and I've always gone."

I took a breath.

The little girl with the missing teeth was staring at me with her mouth open.

I decided I would not cry in front of her.

"Here are my terms," I said.

"Your terms," he said.

"Thirty days. You sign the divorce on the thirtieth. In those thirty days, you live my day."

"What does that mean?" he said.

"Your mother's day. All of it. You wake when she rings, you give her the pills, you carry the tray, you read to her at night. You do it without Corliss and without the housekeeper and without a nurse, because I never had them."

He gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

"My mother has nurses," he said.

"Your mother has had one nurse for six years. Her name was Aubrey."

"That's absurd."

"Then sign tonight," I said.

Max looked at the papers I'd left on his plate that morning.

He had them folded in his inside pocket.

I could see the corner.

"If I do it," he said. "If I do all thirty days. You come home."

"If you do all thirty, you sign. What I do next is mine."

"That's not a deal," he said.

"That's my deal."

He was quiet for a very long moment.

I watched him run the numbers.

He thought it was a game.

He thought a man who ran a harbor could do a woman's chores for a month, and be home with his wife by Friday.

"Fine," he said.

"Two more things," I said. "My cello comes out on day one."

"Mother sold it," Max said.

"Your mother says she sold it. Open the music room and look."

His eyes narrowed. He didn't answer.

"And you don't touch me," I said. "Not my hand, not my back, not my sleeve."

"I'm your husband."

"That's why."

"Then I have one," Max said. His voice dropped, and I felt the whole room lean in. "No one else. Not for you, and not for me. Thirty days."

"Fine."

"And he doesn't touch you either."

"Thad hugs anyone who cries," I said. "It's in his contract. I'm not agreeing to a ban on hugging."

Behind me, someone in the crowd laughed out loud and turned it into a cough.

Max's color rose.

"Done," he said, between his teeth.

He turned to go.

At the door he stopped, because he is a man who has to ask one more question.

"What happens at five?"

"Five-ten," I said. "That's when she rings the bell."

"And if I'm asleep?"

I thought about the six years of it.

"She'll ring it until you answer," I said.

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