My Husband Wouldn't Sign, So He Gets Thirty Days of My Life novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Fourth Time
At breakfast Sybil orders Aubrey out because Juliette is coming back; Aubrey puts her signed divorce papers on Max's plate, walks out with $212, and learns her mother's cello was supposedly sold.
On the morning my mother-in-law told me to pack, she did it over tea.
She had poured my cup first, the way she did every morning, and she used the sugar tongs with her left hand, because her right hand was the weak one.
"Juliette lands from Paris on Thursday, dear," she said.
"I thought we might settle the rooms before she does."
"Which rooms?" I said.
"The blue suite on the second floor. It gets the morning light."
"That's our floor," I said.
"It is, and I do hate to ask."
She dropped one cube into my cup and stirred it for me.
"The carriage house is perfectly nice. Or the Cape flat, if you'd like the sea. I'll have the housekeeper see to the move."
I stood at the sideboard with the pill organizer in my hand.
It was 7:02 on a Monday in the dining room.
My husband sat across the table from his mother with his phone in front of his face.
He had not looked up since she said the name.
Juliette Ravenel was the woman my husband loved before me.
She had left him eight years ago, and I had never once heard him say her name out loud.
"Max," I said.
"Mm," he said.
"Did you hear your mother?"
"I heard her."
He turned a page on his screen.
"Mother, not at breakfast."
That was the whole of it.
He did not say, I won't allow it.
He did not say, Aubrey lives here.
He said not at breakfast, and he went on reading about a shipping delay in Rotterdam.
Corliss stood in the doorway with his coat over her arm.
She is his assistant, and she has been in every room of his life for nine years.
She looked at the carpet very hard.
The housekeeper came in with the eggs and went straight back out again.
I set the pill organizer next to Sybil's saucer.
It had taken me forty minutes the night before to fill it.
Then I reached into the pocket of my cardigan.
I had carried the envelope there for three weeks.
It was folded in thirds, soft at the edges, and my signature was already on the last page.
"Then where?" I said.
Max glanced up, finally.
"Where what?"
"If not at breakfast, where, Max? You are never anywhere else."
I unfolded the papers and laid them on his plate, on top of the toast.
"Petition for divorce. Joint, uncontested. I signed it on the third."
The table went quiet.
Sybil's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.
"Aubrey," Max said, in the voice he uses on the telephone with Rotterdam. "We've done this."
"We've done this three times."
"And each time we agreed it wasn't the moment."
"You agreed," I said. "I said okay."
That was the truth, and it landed on the table with the toast.
Year three, he said, after the merger.
Year four, he said, not while Mother is worse.
Last Christmas, he said, not now, please, and then he kissed my forehead.
This was the fourth time.
"This is the fourth time," I said. "Corliss has been counting."
Corliss made a small noise in the doorway.
Max looked at her, then at me, genuine surprise crossing his features.
"You're upset," he said. "Because of Juliette."
"I'm upset because your mother just handed me a floor plan of my own demotion, and you ate your eggs."
"I didn't eat my eggs," he said.
"They're gone, Max."
He looked down at his plate.
There was nothing on it but the papers.
"Sign it tonight or tomorrow," I said. "I'll be at a friend's."
Sybil set her cup down on its saucer with a click.
"Where would you possibly go?" she said gently. "You have no one."
"I have a friend."
"A friend with a house? A friend with a cello?"
She lifted her phone off the tray beside her, and I watched her thumb move across it.
"What are you doing?"
"Cancelling the household card, dear. It's in my name. It always was."
She said it kindly, the way she says everything.
My phone buzzed once in my pocket and went dark.
My phone plan ran on her card too.
I took off my apron and folded it.
I put it on the chair.
On the way out I passed the hall table where Sybil keeps her slippers, with the heels worn flat through to the lining.
I saw them and thought nothing of it.
I went upstairs and filled one duffel bag.
Two pairs of jeans, my concert black, and a photo of my mother in a frame the size of a playing card.
Then I went to the music room on the third floor and tried the door.
It was locked, the way it was always locked.
Sybil was in the hallway behind me.
I don't know how she got up there so fast.
"Looking for something?"
"My cello," I said. "My mother's cello. I'm taking it."
"Oh, that old thing."
She patted my arm.
"It was sold, dear. Two years ago. We needed the roof done, and you signed the paper."
I stood there with my hand on the cold brass doorknob.
I had signed a great many papers that year, in a great hurry, with a tray of tea balanced on my knee.
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed on Max's shoes.
He had left for work.
I had two hundred and twelve dollars in my wallet and no way to play the one instrument I had ever loved.
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