My Husband Played Stranger, So I Took Off the Ring novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Maisie swears to secrecy and Roxana sets her terms: say her name at Friday's dinner or she files Monday. Ends on the ring on his chain.

I waited for Maisie to scream.

Instead she came down the last steps in two jumps and threw both arms around my neck.

"You're my sister-in-law," she said into my hair. "You're my actual sister-in-law. I've wanted one my whole life."

"Maisie," Nate said weakly.

"No. Don't talk to me." She let go of me and jabbed a finger at his chest. "You have a wife and you let me introduce you as my boyfriend. In front of her."

"You introduced me as your boyfriend because you wanted to be funny."

"I'm hilarious, and you ruined it."

I looked at her.

She was crying a little, and laughing, and wiping her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve.

I didn't know what I had expected from Nate's family.

It wasn't this.

"I'm not staying married to him," I said.

"Sure," Maisie said. "Okay. Tell me why."

"Because he hid me for three years."

"That's good. That's a good reason." She nodded seriously. "I'm just going to hold your ring until you decide."

She opened her fist and showed me the gold band on her palm.

I almost took it back.

I didn't.

Footsteps pounded down the hall above us, and Bridie appeared at the top of the stairs with a baseball bat.

I don't know where she got it.

She had her glasses pushed up on her head and a look I'd seen once before, when a boy at our grandmother's funeral had called me a charity case.

"Roxy," she said. "Who is he?"

"My husband."

The bat dipped.

"Your what?"

"I'll explain at dinner."

"You don't have a husband. You would have told me."

"I have a husband," I said. "He's just been out of town."

Nate raised both hands. "Bridie, I know how this looks."

"It looks like you're a man in a stairwell with my cousin," Bridie said. "I'm gonna need a better angle."

Maisie ran up the stairs and whispered in her ear.

Bridie's mouth went through four shapes.

Then she lowered the bat and pointed it at Nate. "You're lucky she told me first."

She went back up and closed the door.

A minute later we all heard her say, through the wall, "A HUSBAND."

I put my hand over my eyes.

"Okay," Maisie said, very quietly, and sat on the step. "Nate, tell me how bad it is."

"It's not bad."

"You're lying. You do a thing with your eyebrow."

"My father can't know about Roxana."

"I know that."

"You know?"

"I know he's insane." She picked at a thread on her jeans. "He reads my mail, Nate. He reads my texts. Last spring he fired my best friend's mom from the school office because she let me use her phone."

I stared at her.

Nate said, "You never told me that."

"You never asked," she said, and I heard the twist in it.

He had been gone from her life, too.

I sat down beside her, because something in my chest wasn't strong enough to stay standing.

"Here are my terms," I said.

Nate leaned against the rail.

Maisie sat up.

"I'll come to the trustees' dinner on Friday. I'll sit where you tell me to. I won't say a word to anyone."

"Thank you," Nate started.

"I'm not finished."

He stopped.

"At the dinner," I said, "in front of your father and every trustee in that room, you say my name. You say who I am to you."

His face did something complicated.

"If you don't say it, I'll file the papers Monday morning, and I will not take a dollar from you or your family."

"And if I do?" he said.

"Then I'll decide what to do with you after."

Maisie held up the ring and squinted at the light through the window.

"That seems more than fair," she whispered.

Nate was quiet for so long that I thought I'd gone too far.

Then he said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I've been trying to say your name in that house for two years."

I laughed, short and ugly.

"You haven't said it to me in two years."

"Because every time I picked up the phone to call you," Nate said, "I wanted to tell you something I couldn't."

It was such a strange sentence that I stopped breathing.

Wanted to tell me what?

He looked down, and the collar of his shirt slipped a little.

There was a thin silver chain around his neck.

It had come loose from his shirt when he leaned on the rail.

At the end of the chain, resting against his collarbone, was a gold ring.

It was a plain band exactly like mine.

He saw me looking.

He didn't tuck it back in.

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