Seven Days to Lose Your Husband novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Day One
At the anniversary party Preston arrives with a suitcase and new keys, and Elias gives Adeline his ring and key and walks out; when he returns for his things the lock no longer knows him, and his lawyer answers that the papers have been ready since November.
Preston walked through our front door at seven o'clock with a suitcase, and forty of our friends cheered.
He held up a new set of keys and shook them over his head.
"Seven days as Adeline's husband," he announced. "She invited me herself."
Adeline slid an arm around his shoulders and turned to look at me.
Her eyes were bright, and she was already half smiling.
"If Elias really loves me," she said, "he'll be jealous."
Somebody near the bar raised a phone and started recording.
This was the fourth year of the game.
The first year, Preston wore my tailored suit to dinner, and I made him take it off in front of everyone.
Adeline followed me into the hall, kissed me, and promised it was the first time and the last.
The second year, she gave him our bedroom and sent me to the guest room.
Last year, he sat in my chair at her parents' table, and her mother called him her son-in-law.
When I walked out of that dinner, Adeline caught my arm in the driveway.
"It's only a title," she said. "Why does it matter so much?"
Now forty people were waiting for me to shout, so that she could laugh, kiss me and tell the room I was the only man she wanted.
"Careful, Elias," one of her friends called. "Everything in this house runs on Prescott money. You don't want to lose the couch."
People laughed, and Adeline laughed with them.
I said nothing.
I went upstairs and packed a duffel with my shirts, my sketchbooks, my laptop and my father's old watch.
When I came back down, the music had stopped and every phone in the room was pointed at me.
I took off my wedding ring.
I took my house key off its ring.
I set both in Adeline's open palm.
"Seven days is too short," I said. "He can have my place permanently."
Her smile stayed where it was.
I walked out the front door.
Behind me, her friends were already laughing again.
"Elias changed his strategy this year."
"Don't give in too fast, Adeline."
"Give him three days," she said, in an easy voice. "He can't stay away from me."
I took a cab to Somerville, to the apartment my parents left me.
I had sold their house in Worcester the year they died, and this was the only thing their estate had left that I hadn't sold.
Nobody had lived here in years.
Dust lay thick on the windowsills, and the kitchen faucet had rusted a dull orange.
I dropped the duffel on the floor and sat down on a bare mattress in the dark.
At midnight Ingrid texted me a screenshot from the group chat Adeline thought I couldn't see.
Adeline had opened a betting pool: five thousand dollars said I'd be home within seventy-two hours.
Under it, Preston had written that his fingerprint was now on the front door.
I didn't answer.
The next morning he posted a photo of himself at our kitchen table, in my slippers, with my house key beside his eggs.
The caption read: Day One of the Seven-Day Husband Challenge.
Her friends joined in within minutes.
Someone asked if the temporary husband should get to drive my car.
Adeline answered before Preston could.
The keys are in the second drawer by the door.
At noon her text arrived.
Marriage needs a little excitement, Elias. It's only a game. Come get what you need, since you're staying away.
I went.
The lock flashed red under my thumb.
Before I could knock, Preston opened the door from inside, wearing my slippers and my second-best watch.
"Adeline said you might come by," he said, with an apologetic smile.
I walked past him and up the stairs.
Our white bedding was gone, and pale blue sheets covered the bed.
My books, my razor and the charger from my nightstand had been swept into a cardboard box on the floor.
Our wedding portrait had come off the wall.
It leaned in the corner beside a second carton, and the carton covered half the photograph, most of Adeline's dress and part of my face.
Adeline stood by the window with her arms crossed.
"You've made your point," she said. "Take what you need, and we'll talk properly when the week is over."
Preston stopped in the doorway.
"Would it help if I moved to the guest room?" he asked.
He made no move to pick up his suitcase.
"No," Adeline said. "Changing the rules now ruins the whole thing. The temporary husband gets the main bedroom."
Then she looked at me and waited.
I knew exactly what she was waiting for.
She wanted me to throw him out, shout at her, and make her choose in front of him.
Afterward she would laugh, kiss me and call it proof.
I picked up the box instead.
"Is this everything?" I asked.
The excitement in her face went out for the first time that day.
"You don't have to make it so serious," she said. "We were only having fun."
I carried the box down the stairs and out the front door.
Neither of them followed me.
I put the box in the back seat of my car and sat at the wheel with my phone in my hand.
I had a message from the lawyer I'd hired in November, after the dinner.
The papers have been drafted since then, Mr. Conant. Whenever you're ready.
I typed my answer: Now.
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