Dripping Sin

Fish Brain

I broke the news to Daniel over dinner.

That was my first mistake. Dinner was the worst time to tell Daniel anything important because he ate with his phone beside his plate and his eyes moved between his food and his screen in a rotation so practiced he probably didn't notice he was doing it anymore.

"I got a job," I said.

He looked up. Not at me exactly, more in my direction. "What kind of job?"

"Personal assistant position. A corporate firm downtown." I kept my voice even. "It's a good opportunity and the pay is significant."

He put his fork down slowly. "You didn't mention you were looking for work."

"It came up quickly."

He studied me for a moment with the particular expression he wore when something required more attention than he wanted to give it. Not anger, not concern. Just the mild inconvenience of a man being asked to engage.

"Which company?" he asked.

"Carver Group."

Something moved across his face. Recognition. "Luca Carver's firm."

My stomach tightened but I kept my face still. "You know it?"

"Everyone in the city knows it." He picked his fork back up. "It's fine I suppose. Just don't let it interfere with the hospital visits."

That was it. That was the full extent of his reaction. He went back to his food and his phone and I sat across from him in the house we shared and thought about how a person could feel lonelier inside a marriage than they ever did alone.

I was still thinking about it when Margaret called at nine.

---

She had clearly spoken to Daniel first because she opened without preamble.

"Personal assistant," she said, and the two words carried the full weight of her disapproval the way only Margaret could load a simple phrase. "You're going to be someone's secretary."

"It's a senior role," I said. "The salary alone is more than most management positions."

"Money." She said it like I had mentioned something distasteful. "Mia you have a sick child in a hospital and a husband building a business from the ground up and instead of putting your energy into your family you want to go fetch coffee for a billionaire."

"I want to contribute," I said. "Financially to Eli's treatment."

"Then contribute to Daniel's company." Her voice shifted into the tone she used when she believed she was being generous. "He needs administrative support. You could work alongside your husband, build something together as a family. That is what a wife does."

"Daniel hasn't asked me."

"Because he is too proud to ask," she said. "So I am asking on his behalf. Come and work in the business, Mia. Even with your fish brain. Filing, phones, whatever is needed. At least you would be watering your own garden instead of fertilizing someone else's."

I looked at the wall of my bedroom.

"I appreciate the suggestion Margaret," I said. "I'll think about it."

I had no intention of thinking about it.

---

Daniel found me in the bedroom an hour later.

I was laying out my outfit for the morning, a simple navy dress, professional, understated, and he stood in the doorway watching me with his hands in his pockets.

"My mother called," he said.

"I know."

"She thinks you should come and work with me."

I smoothed the dress across the chair and turned to face him. "And what do you think?"

He was quiet for a moment. Daniel was a handsome man in a quiet way, the kind of face that photographed well and revealed very little. We had been married for six years and I sometimes felt I knew his habits better than I knew him.

"I think," he said carefully, "that it might look strange. My wife working for another man."

"It's a job Daniel."

"It's Luca Carver," he said, and something briefly sharpened in his voice before he softened it again. "The man has a reputation."

"For running a successful company."

"Among other things." He crossed his arms loosely. "My mother's idea isn't a bad one. You could come in with me. Help with the admin side. It would keep things simple."

I looked at my husband standing in the doorway of our bedroom, suggesting I come and file his paperwork and answer his phones, and I thought about the word simple and what it had cost me over the years.

"Your mother called it watering my own garden," I said.

He almost smiled. "That does sound like her."

"She also implied I would be wasting my fish brain elsewhere." I picked up my bag and checked that my card, Luca's card, was still in the inside pocket. It was. "I start tomorrow at seven."

His almost-smile faded. "Mia."

"Eli's nursing schedule is written on the fridge," I said. "The evening nurse knows to call me directly if anything changes."

He looked at me for a long moment. There was something in his expression I couldn't immediately name, not quite hurt or anger. Something that lived between the two.

"Fine," he said eventually.

He turned and went back down the hallway and I listened to his footsteps and thought that fine was the most Daniel word in the English language. Everything between us had become fine. Fine and okay and we'll see and don't worry about it, a language built entirely of surfaces.

I set my alarm for five-thirty and got into bed and stared at the ceiling.

I thought about Eli and hoped he was sleeping without distress. I thought about the nurse Luca had assigned, the one he had apparently briefed personally, and I hated how much that had settled something in me.

I thought about seven o'clock tomorrow morning.

I thought about walking into Luca Carver's building and what version of myself I intended to be when I did.

I closed my eyes.

My phone lit up once on the nightstand. A message from a number I now knew by heart.

*Wear something you're comfortable losing.*

I sat up in bed and stared at those five words and my heart did that thing again, that loud unreasonable thing, and I pressed the phone face down against the nightstand and told myself to go to sleep.

I did not go to sleep for a very long time.