He Signed His Divorce Without Reading It, Now He Kneels novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: No One Knows

Genevieve and Alasdair set one rule, nobody knows until the decree, and a burn on her arm brings his hand to her wrist; then Colin calls to demand her at Sunday dinner.

On the stairs, after the kiss, I put my hand flat on Alasdair's chest and held him back.

"Rules," I said.

His breathing was uneven. "Go on."

"Until the judge stamps it, I'm still Colin's wife on paper. If his mother's lawyers find out about this, they'll call it adultery and use it."

"Then nobody finds out."

"Nobody at the lab. Nobody at all. Not a look across the bench."

"Not a look." He took my hand off his chest and kept it for a moment. "And after the stamp?"

"After the stamp, I'll decide."

He nodded once, and he almost smiled. "Rule one, then."

That was Sunday.

By Wednesday I had learned that a man can follow a rule exactly and still make it hard.

Alasdair kept the whole length of the lab between us. He called me Dr. Wrenfield in front of the students, and he never sat closer to me than the next stool over.

But the lab had one cold room.

He always seemed to be in it when I needed a reagent.

He'd hand me the bottle and not let go of it for a second too long.

That was all. It was enough that I stopped reading my own notes.

On Wednesday afternoon I was reaching across the water bath for a flask, and my forearm slid over the steaming edge.

It didn't hurt at first. Then it did, a bright line from wrist to elbow.

I hissed through my teeth.

"Sink," Alasdair said, already beside me.

He took my arm above the burn and walked me to the steel basin at the end of the bench. The tap ran cold over my wrist.

His hand closed around it.

In Colin's house people had taken my arm to steer me to a chair.

This was different.

His fingers were wrapped all the way around my wrist.

His thumb sat on the inside of it, right on my pulse.

"Keep it under," he said.

"It's a first-degree burn. I've had worse from a hot plate."

"Keep it under."

Water ran over both our hands.

Across the lab a student sat with her back to us, watching a screen, and she never turned around.

I looked at his hand.

It wasn't steady.

A man who handled fifty-milligram samples all day with no tremor was holding my wrist, and his hand was shaking.

Too much coffee, I told myself. He drinks it by the pot.

"It's been three minutes," I said.

"Five," he said. "I'm counting."

He didn't let go at five, or at six.

I felt his thumb move once across my pulse, very slightly, and then stop.

"Alasdair."

"I know." His voice was low. He still didn't let go. "I'm following the rule. I'm treating a burn."

"You are."

"Tell me if I'm not."

I should have said it. I thought it, clearly: you are not, and I don't want you to stop.

What came out was, "The water's getting my sleeve wet."

He laughed under his breath, and finally he let go.

He wrapped my arm in a dressing from the first-aid box, and his hands were gentler than they had any reason to be.

"Don't use that arm on the bench for a day," he said, in his Dr. Seidel voice, and walked to the cold room.

I stood at the sink with my wrist held against my chest.

It stayed warm long after the burn stopped hurting.

That evening I ate dinner in the apartment the lab kept for visiting researchers.

It sat over a flower shop, and the bed smelled of someone else's laundry soap.

I sat on the edge of it with the glove-compartment envelope in my lap.

I had carried it up from the car, and I turned it over three times.

Open the day you're free.

Not yet.

If I opened it now and it asked me to go back, or to forgive, I would do it.

I always had.

I put it in the drawer of the bedside table.

My phone buzzed on Thursday at seven in the evening, and Colin's name lit the screen.

I answered it standing in the apartment's tiny kitchen, with the burn throbbing under its dressing.

"Gen." He sounded out of breath. "Iris fainted this afternoon. She's all right, the doctor's been, but she hasn't eaten in two days."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"Mother wants her at Sunday dinner, and she wants you there. She said it twice."

"I'm in the middle of a contract, Colin."

"It's one dinner." He lowered his voice. "Please. Don't make this harder for me."

I looked at the dressing on my arm.

"I'll be there at six," I said.

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