Page 16 of Such a Good Wife

“No. My kids.”

“Oooooh. Right. Sorry,” she says. She’s so young that the whole world is from her twentysomething perspective. She doesn’t see other people in her circle as adults with crushing responsibilities. She gets to be a bar hostess, smoking pot and writing bad poetry. Good for you, I think. Hold on to those years.

“Well, there are no more book readings this month, so we can hear each other talk at least. And it puts Jonathan in a better mood,” she jokes. That’s what I needed to hear. No more Luke. He’s long gone.

“I actually thought I’d come back tomorrow, now that everyone is settled into routine at home.”

“Great.” She fumbles with a vape pen and exhales a cotton candy–scented puff of smoke. “See you then.”

It’s Thursday. It’s been almost three weeks since I attended the last writing group. I know the reading series is done and I won’t see him, but still, I prepare as if I will. I can’t help myself. I wear a dove-gray, A-line dress that falls just below my knee. I feel a little like Jackie Kennedy. I’m aiming for classy; I want to feel less like the three-dollar hooker I’ve been feeling like in recent days. I roll up my hair into a French twist clasped together with a barrette encrusted with faux pearls.

The bookstore is quieter tonight. There are no excited women lined up to hear Luke Ellison read from his new book. The rows of chairs that were filled with eager fans a few weeks ago are now stacked up against a wall behind the café, sad looking in the shadowy corner.

Only three of us show up tonight. Labor Day has thrown off everyone’s schedule this week, so it’s a very short meeting.

Mia reads from a story she’s working on as Jonathan and I listen. It’s an angsty tale of unrequited love and revenge. She’s going through a divorce, and so her story is about a woman who poisons her husband slowly and painfully by putting antifreeze into his whiskey every evening so she can kill him and get his life insurance money.

“‘And when it was done,’” Mia reads, “‘I thought about cutting his nasty T-shirt with the barbecue stain on the chest right off his flabby, hairy body and into bits, and while I had the scissors, maybe cutting off his lips along with that porn mustache I hate, but I knew it needed to look like an accident, so I just dialed 911 and pretended to think it was a heart attack or something.’”

I look around with bulging eyes to see if anyone else thinks this sounds a bit too specific, but everyone is reading along, reactionless. My eyes wander through the café and down to each shelf of stacked books. Did some part of me think he was going to keep coming back every week until he saw me again—just waiting quietly at a café table as if he has nothing more important in his life to do?

I deny to myself that the prickly heat across the back of my neck is a brush of disappointment that he’s not here. I don’t share the story I’m working on.

“I’m just here to learn. I’m here to keep myself accountable and keep writing,” I say. “Maybe next week.”

Since there’s no pressure to share your work, it’s very supportive and everyone is kind to me.

As our small group disperses, I walk out to the parking lot with Mia. She jokes that if she ever got up the guts to kill her ex-husband, she wouldn’t have the patience to do it slowly with antifreeze, she’d just shoot the fucker in the head. I give a courtesy laugh even though the comment makes me a little uneasy because there’s something in her eyes that suggests she’s thought about this a little too much.

When I open my car door and sit in the driver’s seat, I see a flyer flapping from beneath my windshield wiper. Annoyed, I reach my hand around to snatch it. But before I crumple it up, I realize it’s handwritten. It’s not addressed to anyone and it’s not signed by anyone. It just says “Meet me at my place.”

I hear my heart pounding in my ears, my pulse racing. I wonder if I’ve been set up. But nobody else knows, I’m certain of that. I should throw this in the public trash can in front of the doors, I should drive home and pretend I didn’t see it. Luke Ellison will be out of the country very shortly and I’ll probably never see him again. I have no right to contemplate this another second.

I take a few deep breaths. I’m sweating, I’m panicking. I should go home. Instead, I text Collin and tell him I’m hanging out with some of the group members but that I won’t be as late as last time.

I leave my car in the bookstore parking lot. I don’t dare have it seen anywhere near his house. I walk, casually, down the main street, past the busy bars and restaurants, not pretending to hide something at all, and then I duck into a gas station parking lot. I make the walk across the wooded area that butts up against his house. A few yards from the house, I stop. I decide I need to just turn and go. But then I tell myself that I’m just here to see why he left the note. I knock.

He opens the door almost immediately. The second it closes behind me, he gently pushes me up against it, holding my hands over my head, and kisses me. And just like before, he pulls me up, my legs around him, and we claw at each other’s clothes, pulling them off ravenously. When he sets me down on the kitchen island, that’s when I know the story I’m quietly telling myself—that I won’t let it go too far this time, that I just wanted to see him before he left to say goodbye—is a lie. We make love fast and hard.

When it’s over, we sit in the dark of his remodeled kitchen. Me, cross-legged on the counter, and him pouring us a drink.

“I don’t have long,” I say.

“That’s too bad, but I understand.”

“How did you know that was my car,” I ask, “to leave the note on?”

“It’s a very small town,” he says, smiling, and hands me my drink.

I instantly wonder where he has seen me. Was it schlepping the kids to some practice, running errands with no makeup, wearing an oversize sweater and leggings? Oh my God, did he see me with Collin somewhere? I don’t ask, I simply nod in agreement.

“It is.”

“Your kids are in school now, during the day, right?” he asks. I don’t know why I feel a sense of anger at his mention of my children. It’s not rational, it’s just that he shouldn’t know anything about them. I just nod yes.

“I’ll be here working. I usually drive into the city or hang out at coffee shops to write, maybe do a little work at home. But I’ll stay here, I’ll work from my office every day, so we don’t have to arrange anything or have any traceable contact. You just show up whenever you want and I’ll just be here. It’ll be safe.”

“I should go,” I say, putting down the drink and standing. I bend to slip on my shoes; he moves over to me, running his fingers through the back of my hair, kissing my neck. I let myself lean my head back and feel it. Then he kisses my mouth and looks at my eyes. “It’s an open offer.”

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