Perfect Husband Act: Now My Wife's Sorry novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Eight Thousand

Ethan cooks her mother's rice and sees an $8,000 transfer to Travis scheduled for his last night; he does not ask, Audrey grabs his wrist, and on the shared calendar he finds her alarm: DO NOT SLEEP. LAST CHANCE.

Travis got off on the lobby floor and waved, and I stayed in the elevator until it reached the basement.

I did not ask him what he meant.

I stood in the parking garage with my hand on the car roof and said it aloud, to no one.

"He knows."

*Hours remaining: fifty-eight.*

The system gave no explanation, and I had no one to ask.

So I went home and made dinner.

I made her mother's chicken and rice, the recipe I had copied off an index card two winters ago and never cooked, because I was afraid she would see it as a trick.

I set the table for two.

I lit the candle, because last night's candle had burned for nothing.

At 7:20 the front door opened, and Audrey came in with her bag over her shoulder.

She stopped when she smelled it.

"You cooked."

"I did."

"That's my mother's rice."

"It is."

She set her bag down very slowly.

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to," I said. "Sit."

She sat across from me, and we ate.

It was the first meal we had eaten at the same table in weeks.

She did not say it was good.

She took a second helping.

After dinner she went upstairs to change, and I stacked the plates.

Her phone buzzed on the counter by the sink.

I did not look at it.

My own phone was beside it, open to the shared bank account, because I had been checking whether the rent had cleared.

The screen showed a new line under *Scheduled*.

*Bannon Advisory. $8,000. October 31. 11:55 p.m.*

Eight thousand dollars.

Double what she had sent on the 28th.

On the one night I had left.

My hands went still in the dishwater.

For a year I would have grabbed my phone, run upstairs and thrown it at her feet.

I would have said what I always said.

*Where is the money going? What does he have on you? Who are you protecting?*

I dried my hands and put the phone face down.

I finished the plates.

"You looked at it."

She was standing in the kitchen doorway, in an old sweatshirt, with her arms folded.

I had not heard her come back.

"I looked," I said.

"And?"

"And it's your money."

She did not move.

"You're not going to ask."

"No."

"You are not going to ask what it's for?"

"If you wanted me to know, you would have told me a year ago."

Something went across her face.

She came across the kitchen in three steps and took my wrist.

Her fingers closed hard around it, right over the pulse.

My hand turned over, palm up, all on its own, and she looked down at it.

"Why aren't you angry?" she said.

Her voice was thin.

"I'm tired," I said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I have."

She did not let go.

Her thumb moved once across the inside of my wrist, and I do not think she knew she had done it.

"You're cold," she said.

"I'm fine."

"Your hand is freezing."

She wrapped both of her hands around it, and neither of us said what we were doing.

I could feel her breathing.

I could smell the shampoo she had used since the day I met her.

For three years I had been trying to get close to this woman, and I had never once gotten this close without a fight.

If she had asked me then to stay, I would have said yes.

She did not ask.

"I need to work," Audrey said abruptly, and let go.

She picked up her phone and her laptop and went to the little study off the hall.

The door closed softly.

I stood in the kitchen and looked at my wrist, where the marks of her fingers were fading.

*Hours remaining: fifty-one.*

I should have gone to bed.

I went to the hall instead, because the study door had not latched, and through the gap I could see her laptop with the shared calendar open.

I do not snoop.

But the calendar was the one we had made together, in the first week, so that neither of us would forget the other's birthday.

I looked at it for the first time in months.

On Friday, October 31, at 11:55 p.m., there was a single entry.

She had typed it in capital letters and set an alarm.

*DO NOT SLEEP. LAST CHANCE.*

I read it, and I read it again.

October 31 at midnight was exactly when I would be gone.

She was setting an alarm for five minutes before.

And I had never told her a word about the system.

Behind the study door, something small and hard hit the floor.

Her voice said, very quietly, "Damn it."

She was crying.

I stood there in the hall with my hand on the wall, and I did not know if it was for me.

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