The Husband Who Refused to Let Me Go

The shower was still running when I sat down on the edge of the bed. His white shirt was folded over my arm. I had ironed it twice that morning. He hated even one wrinkle. Sunlight lay across the carpet in long yellow stripes. It was a pretty room. Rich people always make sure the room is pretty. "Natalie!" His voice came through the bathroom door. "Is my shirt ready?" "It's right here," I said. "Put it on the chair. And the gray tie. Not the blue one." "Okay." "Not the blue one, Natalie." "I heard you, Dominic." The water kept running. That was how most of our talks went. Short. Flat. Like two strangers waiting for the same bus. I laid the shirt on the chair and smoothed the sleeve with my hand. My fingers felt cold again. They had been cold for weeks. I rubbed them together and told myself it was the air conditioning. That was when a phone buzzed. It was not his normal phone. That one sat on his desk downstairs, big and black and boring. This buzz came from the nightstand on his side of the bed. A small, sharp sound, like a bee stuck in a jar. The drawer was open. Only a finger wide, but open. Dominic never left it open. Not once in two years. I knew I should leave it alone. I knew it the way you know not to touch a hot stove. I walked over anyway. The phone lay on top of some papers with the screen lit up. A picture was waiting there, big and bright. A girl in a silver dress. It was long and tight, with a low back, a dress for a woman who had been to a hundred parties. But the girl in it looked like she was still waiting for someone to ask her to dance. Her hair was pinned up. Her eyes were huge. She smiled into a mirror like she wanted it to love her back. Under the picture was one line. Thank you for the birthday present, Dominic. I read it once. Then again. Then a third time, like the words might change if I was patient. They did not change. My heart did not break. I always thought it would make a loud crack, like a plate. Instead it just got heavy, like someone dropped a wet towel on it. I knew that face. Everybody in Miami knew that face. Savannah Pierce. Twenty-five years old. Six years in a row she had finished right behind me in the world rankings. Six years of magazine covers where her name sat one line under mine. I used to feel sorry for her. I really did. I used to think, it must be hard to always come second. Now I thought, she does not look like second place. She looks like a girl who just got picked. I picked up the phone. I don't know why. Maybe I wanted to feel how heavy it was. It was warm. That was the worst part. It had been in his hand last night. Maybe while I was downstairs washing his coffee cup. I sat on the bed and just stared. I thought about how I got here. Two years ago my stepmother told me, across a dinner table, that I was going to marry a man I had never met. A man whose car I had crashed into five times, on purpose, on a hot afternoon on Brickell Avenue. I didn't even know it was the same man until the wedding. I said yes because my dad was sick. I said yes because my brother Tyler needed a lawyer. I said yes because every time I opened my mouth to say no, I saw my father's hands shake. Dominic said yes too. But for a different reason. He thought I had tricked him. He thought the whole mess was my plan, and he decided to make me pay for it. He never said so out loud. He didn't have to. He said it every time he looked at me. The shower stopped. My stomach dropped. I heard the glass door slide. I heard a towel snap. I should have put the phone back. I had time. Three seconds, maybe four. I didn't move. The bathroom door opened. Dominic stood there in a white towel, water running down his shoulders. His hair was wet and pushed back. He looked like an ad for a very expensive watch. He always did. He saw the phone in my hand. I waited for something. A flash of shock. A little red in his cheeks. A "Natalie, I can explain." Nothing came. He just looked bored. "How long are you going to look at it?" he asked. He walked over and plucked it out of my fingers. Easy. Like taking a coin from a child. "Dominic," I said. My voice came out thin. "She sent you a picture." "I can see that." "She's wearing a gown. For her birthday." "Yes." "You bought it for her." He looked at the screen, then at me. For one second I saw something move behind his eyes. Maybe shame. Maybe just annoyance. It was gone before I could tell. "Don't make this a scene," he said. "I'm not making a scene. I'm sitting on a bed." "Good. Keep it that way." He turned his back to me and started pulling on his pants. I looked at the muscles in his shoulders. I used to dream about those shoulders when I was a girl. Not these exact ones. The ones I thought they belonged to. A boy in a dark jacket who pulled me out of the ocean when I was eighteen. I never learned his name. I wrote about him for nine years in a diary I keep under my pillow. That boy was gentle. That boy said "breathe" in a voice like warm water. The man in front of me was putting on cuff links. "Do you ever feel bad?" I asked. "About what?" "About me." He stopped. He did not turn around. "We have an arrangement, Natalie," he said. "I keep your family afloat. You live in a nice house. Nobody asks for more than that." "I never asked for a nice house." "No." He fastened one cuff link. "You asked for me to stop sending money to your stepmother. Wasn't that last month?" "I asked because she keeps saying it's not enough." "Then she's lying." "Or you are." That one landed. I saw his jaw tighten. The room went so quiet I could hear the clock on the dresser. "Careful," he said, very softly. I should have shut up. Rosa would have told me to. The old Natalie, the one who walked out under spotlights with a violin under her chin, would have lifted her head and kept going. But the new Natalie just looked at her cold hands. "She looks so young," I said. "In the picture." "She is young." "How young is too young, Dominic?" "Don't." "I'm only asking." "I said don't." He picked up his shirt from the chair, the one I had ironed twice, and shook it out. He looked at the collar. I waited for him to find a wrinkle. He didn't. For some reason that made me want to cry more than anything else. I stood up and went to the window. Down in the garden, a gardener was trimming the hedges. He looked so peaceful. I wanted to climb out and switch places with him. "I found out last year," I said without turning around. "About the phone. Did you know that?" I heard him stop buttoning. "Rosa told me," I said. "Well, she didn't tell me. She looked at me with sad eyes for a week until I figured it out." "Rosa talks too much." "She doesn't say a thing. She's the only one who doesn't." "Then how did you know?" "A lipstick mark on a shirt collar. I wash them by hand, remember? You can't hide much from someone who touches every collar." I turned. He was looking at me now. Really looking, for the first time that morning. I couldn't read his face. It was like trying to see through frosted glass. "And you stayed," he said. "Where would I go?" He didn't answer. He tied the gray tie, not the blue one, and slid his watch onto his wrist. A Patek Philippe. It cost more than my father's first boat. He checked the time with a little flick of his wrist. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to throw the nightstand lamp. I wanted to say, I used to fill a whole hall with silence just by lifting my bow. I wanted to say, I was the best in the world at something once, and you took it. My throat closed up like a fist. Instead I said, "I'm fine." "Of course you are." He sat on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes. I stood very still. My left hand gave a tiny twitch, just a flutter, like a moth under my skin. I pressed it flat against my leg and hoped he hadn't seen. He didn't. He never did. He stood up, straightened his jacket, and slid the second phone into his pocket. Then he picked up his keys and looked at me with those cold blue eyes. "You wanted to tell me something yesterday," he said. "You said it was important." My heart jumped. I had practiced it all night. Lying awake next to a man who slept like a stone, I had said the words over and over in the dark. I had imagined every way he might answer. Most of them ended badly. "I did," I said. "Well?" "It's a long story." He looked at his watch. The little flick again. "Then you'd better make it short," he said. "You have five minutes." Five minutes. That was all I had to change my whole life. What on earth was I going to say?