Chapter 6: The Clean Phone

In Cleveland, Brendan handed me his phone in the dressing room and told me to read anything I wanted.

"Go on," he said. "I mean it."

He was standing in front of the mirror, fixing his tie.

The Cleveland theater was an old gold-ceiling palace with a dressing room the size of a closet, and the light bulbs around the mirror made him glow.

I held his phone in both hands.

It was the clean one.

The press phone, with the sponsor texts and the family photos and an unread email from his mother.

"What's this for?" I said.

"After the dinner," he said, "I realized I've been a bad husband. Busy. You asked me a question in that elevator and I didn't answer it."

"I didn't ask a question."

"You looked one." He turned and took my chin gently in his fingers. "I want you to know I have nothing to hide from you, Roz. Not ever."

His eyes were warm.

His thumb was warm.

I looked at that handsome, tired, wicked face and understood what I was holding.

It was a test.

He had noticed something small, in the elevator, and he wanted to know how much.

If I took the phone and read it with a rush of relief, he would know I had been worried.

If I read it with suspicion, he would know I had been looking.

If I handed it back without a glance, I would look like a wife who didn't care.

I did the one thing that fit none of those.

I opened his photos, scrolled to a picture of the two of us in a rowboat, laughing, and started to cry.

Not much.

Two tears, which I let fall without wiping.

"You kept this," I said.

"Of course I kept it."

"This was before the book. Before any of this." I held the phone against my chest. "I just miss that man. I don't know where he went."

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