Chapter 9
927 Words
[Unwanted Ghosts]
Marcus appeared on a Thursday.
I was not surprised, exactly — the news that Zoe Bennett had moved into Ethan Cole's penthouse had apparently reached him through the specific reliable efficiency of mutual acquaintances who considered this information relevant, and Marcus had always had a talent for appearing precisely when he was least wanted — but the specific Thursday he chose was one when Ethan was traveling for a board meeting in London and I was therefore managing the triple morning routine alone, which he would have known.
He was waiting outside the building when I brought the children out for school. He looked — good, in the way of men who have been somewhat released from a marriage that didn't fit them and have spent the intervening years eating well and sleeping enough. He was wearing the kind of jacket he had always wanted but that we could never afford in those years when I was working double shifts.
The children had never met him. He had never tried. This was his choice and I had made my peace with it.
'Zoe,' he said.
Ava, Leo, and Mia assessed the unknown adult with their varying styles — Ava's chin went up, Leo looked interested, Mia looked skeptical.
'Children, this is an old friend of mine. Mrs. Park will take you to school today.' I signaled to our nanny, who was extraordinarily good at reading situations. She gathered the three children with the efficiency of practice and moved them toward the car, and I turned to Marcus.
'Why are you here?'
He had the grace not to pretend it was casual. 'I heard about Cole. I wanted to—'
'You wanted to what, Marcus?'
He looked, briefly, uncomfortable with himself. 'I know things didn't end well between us.'
'You were in bed with my best friend on our anniversary,' I said. 'Which is a fair summary of how it ended.'
'Zoe—'
'I don't need anything from you,' I said. 'My children don't need anything from you. You made those choices and I made mine and both of us have moved into different lives.' I looked at him levelly. 'If this is about Cole — about money, about what you imagine this arrangement is—'
'He's using you,' Marcus said, with the specific confidence of someone who has decided something and will not be confused by evidence. 'He's a billionaire. He doesn't do anything without a reason. You have his kids and he's figured out it's cheaper to marry you than to deal with custody lawyers—'
'Go home,' I said.
'Zoe—'
'I mean it. Go home.' I stepped toward the car. 'Don't come back here. Don't contact me. Don't contact the children. You gave that up.'
I got in the car and closed the door and watched Marcus standing on the sidewalk in his new jacket as we pulled away, and I tried to decide how much of what he'd said had landed.
Some of it had landed. That was the honest answer.
Not because I believed it — I had spent eight weeks watching Ethan Cole with our children, and whatever his reasons for the arrangement, the care he extended to Ava, Leo, and Mia was not performance. It was too specific and too consistent and too willing to cancel board meetings to be anything but real.
But the underlying question — what is this, actually, between us — I had been successfully not asking, and Marcus's careless, self-interested version of it had knocked the question loose.
I had dinner with Sarah Park that evening — the colleague, not the nanny — and told her about Marcus's visit.
'He's not wrong that you don't entirely know what Ethan wants,' she said, with the precision of a scientist who didn't believe in comfortable imprecision.
'I know what he wants,' I said. 'He wants to be a father.'
'What else?'
I looked at my wine.
'He looks at you,' Sarah said, in the tone of someone stating an empirical observation.
'He looks at everyone,' I said. 'He's attentive.'
'Not like that,' she said.
I looked at my wine for a longer time.
When I came home, Ethan was back from London a day early — he came through the door at ten-thirty, carrying his travel bag, with the slightly worn quality of a man who had crossed time zones twice in forty-eight hours. He looked at me in the hallway and said:
'Everything all right?'
He could read rooms. He could read people. It was one of the things I had noted and not examined.
'Marcus came by,' I said.
Something tightened in his face — not rage, nothing dramatic, but the specific controlled quality of a man receiving information he doesn't like.',
'What did he want?'
'To tell me you were using me,' I said.
A pause.
'Are you?'
He looked at me for a long moment. Then he crossed the hallway and sat down on the bench by the door and said, quietly:
'No.'
Just that. One word, with the specific weight of a man who doesn't add words that aren't necessary.
I looked at him. He looked back.
'Okay,' I said.
He nodded. He went to make himself tea — he drank tea at night, which I had noted — and I went to check on the children, and we moved through the apartment in the particular domestic rhythm we had developed, and whatever question Marcus had knocked loose settled back into its compartment.
For now.
- Writer
