Silence Was Not Forgiveness novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Lena sets five rules at the kitchen table and makes Nolan end the affair on speakerphone; Kendall says she left the wipes on purpose.

I came downstairs at eight and found a yellow legal pad on the kitchen table, with a mug of coffee beside it and my chair pulled out.

Lena sat across from me already dressed, her hair knotted low, a pen in her hand.

"Sit," she said.

I sat. "Lena, I can explain."

"Not yet. Terms first."

She turned the legal pad around so I could read it.

She had numbered five lines in her court-reporter print, small and straight.

"One," she said. "You end it today, on speaker, with me in the room."

"Lena."

"Two. You tell nobody until your mother's birthday dinner on the fifteenth. Not Joan, not Dale, not a friend from work."

"That's two weeks away. Why wait?"

"I have a reason."

"What reason?"

"That isn't one of the questions you get to ask." She went on without raising her voice. "Three. When I ask you something, you answer it, truthfully, whenever I choose to ask."

I nodded because there was nothing else to do.

"Four. You sleep on the couch. I put sheets out."

"Five?"

"You don't touch me."

I looked at the five lines for a long time.

Lena had never once raised her voice at me in nine years of marriage, and I had always counted that as luck.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I know that's not enough."

"It isn't," she said. "Get your phone."

I got it from the counter and set it on the table between us.

My hand wasn't steady, and she watched that happen.

"Call her," she said. "Put it on speaker."

Kendall picked up on the second ring, bright and rushed, with office noise behind her.

"Hi! I was just about to text you. Did Lena like the toast? I thought Dale killed it."

"Kendall," I said. "I need to say something, and Lena is sitting here."

The noise on her end went away.

"I'm ending it," I said. "Whatever this was. It's over."

I looked at Lena. She hadn't moved.

There was a short pause on the line, and then Kendall spoke gently.

"Okay," she said. "Hi, Lena."

"Good morning, Kendall," Lena said.

"I'm sorry you had to hear it like this. I really am." She sounded relieved. "Honestly, I'm glad it's out. You two looked so tired last night."

"Kendall, stop," I said.

"I left the last one where she'd find it, Nolan. I thought it would be kinder than a conversation."

The kitchen was silent except for the refrigerator.

I hadn't told her Lena had found a wipe. Nobody had told her that.

"Thank you for being honest with me," Lena said evenly.

"Of course," Kendall said. "Take care of each other."

The call ended. The screen went dark.

I stared at the phone and then at my wife, who was writing something on the pad.

"She did it on purpose," I said. "The wipes. She wanted you to find them."

"Yes."

"I swear I didn't know that."

"I know you didn't." Lena capped her pen. "You aren't that clever."

I flinched, and I think she saw that too.

"You can say what you want to now," she said. "Anything you've been wanting to say. I'll listen once."

I opened my mouth.

All of it was in there. The hotel rooms, the drives home from the airport, the lies I had told in two directions for four months.

And behind those, the other thing, the one I had kept for two years and would never say out loud if I could help it.

"I never meant for it to turn into this," I said.

Lena waited.

"I was lonely."

"Mm," she said.

"You were at the clinic all the time, and the house was so quiet after the treatments kept failing, and I didn't know what to say to you."

"So you said nothing to me and plenty to her."

It was true. I had no answer for it.

"That's all?" she asked.

"That's all."

She nodded slowly and wrote one line on the pad.

Then she stood, took the pad, and went to the sink to rinse her mug.

"Dale is picking you up for the warehouse inventory at ten," she said. "Go to work, Nolan. Behave normally."

"Lena, how can I behave normally?"

"The same way you have for four months."

She dried her hands and turned to look at me.

Her face was calm, but her eyes were not.

"Five wipes in four months," she said. "Think about that. Somebody wanted me to count."

I had no idea what she meant.

I would, by Monday.

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