Chapter 3 - The Inventory of a Life
The suite was larger than our master bedroom back on Elm Street. It had a sitting area with two mustard-yellow velvet armchairs, a low oak coffee table, and an oval dining table pushed against the far wall under a framed print of a nineteenth-century schooner.
On the table sat an uncooled bottle of Veuve Clicquot sitting in a silver bucket with two melting cubes of hotel ice swimming in a cloudy puddle. Beside it were two crystal flutes—the kind with the long, delicate stems that felt like they might snap if you gripped them too hard—and three white room-service plates smeared with the buttery crumbs of croissants and the yellowish grease of scrambled eggs.
On the sofa, half-hidden beneath a tossed gray cardigan, sat a pair of red suede heels with pointed toes and thin, vicious stiletto spikes that looked like they had never touched gravel in their lives.
And beyond them, the king-sized bed. The duvet was half-off, bunched at the foot in a thick, white wave, the sheets twisted into tight, sweat-darkened ropes where two bodies had rolled, tangled, and kicked through the dark hours of a Friday night while I was three hours north, folding laundry and putting fresh lavender sachets into the linen drawers so they would smell nice when he came home on Sunday.
“There are no golf clubs,” I said. I wasn’t talking to Marcus anymore. I was talking to the room. I was reading the inventory of my own replacement. “Where are the clubs, Marcus? Did you leave them in the Pro Shop? Or did you rent them here along with the champagne?”
“Simone, stop,” Brielle said.
Her voice was lower than I expected—not a girl’s voice, but a woman’s voice, smooth and slightly nasal, with the rounded vowels of someone who had grown up somewhere flat and rich, like Ohio or northern Illinois. She hadn't moved from the little entryway. She was still standing with her bare feet on the dark carpet, her toes curled slightly away from the silver Omega box as if it were a dead beetle.
I turned slowly to look at her. Really look at her.
She was younger than me—maybe thirty, thirty-one at most. Her hair was the color of wheat straw, cut into a blunt, chin-length bob that didn't have a single strand out of place, even though she had obviously just rolled out of a bed she shared with my husband. Her legs were long, tan, and smooth—the kind of legs that came from yoga classes three times a week and a diet that didn't include the midnight bowls of buttered popcorn Marcus and I used to share while watching old black-and-white movies on TCM.
“Do you know he’s married?” I asked her.
Marcus made a sharp, choking sound in the back of his throat—“Brielle, don't—”—a desperate, pathetic little bark that sounded like a dog stepping on a thorn.
Brielle didn’t look at him. Her gray-blue eyes stayed fixed on my face with an expression I couldn't quite place until I realized what it was: professional curiosity. The look of an underwriter examining a claim she had already read the file on.
“Yes,” she said.
The word didn't drop; it landed squarely on the carpet like a lead weight.
“You knew?”
“Yes,” she repeated, her chin lifting an inch. There was no shame in her voice, no tremor of discovery. It was simply a fact she was stating for the record, the way she might have told a teller her account number. “He told me on the third date.”
I felt a sudden, sharp coldness start behind my ears and spread down my neck until my jaw felt stiff. “The third date,” I whispered. “Right. Because three dates is usually when you get past the weather and into the details of your wife’s upholstery preferences.”
I turned back to Marcus. He had pulled a blue cotton bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door and shrugged it on, though he hadn't bothered to tie the belt, leaving the white gaps of his chest exposed like a butcher’s diagram. His face was the color of wet newsprint.
“How long?” I asked.
Marcus opened his mouth, but no sound came out—just a dry click of his teeth.
“Eight months,” Brielle said again, before he could find his tongue.
The number hit my chest like a physical blow, knocking the air out of my lungs with such force that I had to reach out and steady my hand against the wooden frame of the minibar.
Eight months.
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I didn't need to count on my fingers. My mind did the work for me with terrifying, mechanical speed. Eight months meant February. February was when we drove up to the mountains for our anniversary weekend in a cabin with a wood-burning stove—the weekend he spent two hours clearing the driveway of heavy, wet slush while I made beef stew inside. Eight months meant my birthday in April, when he brought home a bouquet of pale pink peonies and a card that said To the only woman I’ll ever need. Eight months meant the night my mother had her gallbladder surgery in May, when Marcus sat in the vinyl hospital chair for six hours holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be fine.
He had held my hand in the hospital, and then four hours later he had probably texted her from the parking garage about where they were going to get dinner.
