Chapter 6: What Tara Sent
The server came back at eight-fifteen and, with admirable professionalism, began placing the prix fixe first course in front of twenty-eight people who had largely forgotten they were at a restaurant.
Ryan hadn't touched his menu.
I ate my soup.
It was good — a chestnut bisque with a swirl of cream.
I had ordered it because the description sounded warm, and I had known, sitting at home six days ago planning this evening, that I would need something warm.
Ryan's mother returned from the restrooms and sat back down without speaking.
She picked up her spoon.
She did not look at her son.
Carla was on her phone under the table, not subtle about it.
Daniel had turned his chair back around and was talking quietly to his wife, who had driven up from Indianapolis for what she had been told was a lovely family Christmas dinner.
It had been, in its way, exactly that.
"You said you spoke to a lawyer," Ryan said.
"I did."
"When?"
"The day after I found the reservation."
He absorbed that.
"You've been planning this for six days."
"I've been preparing for six days," I said.
"There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"Planning implies I wanted this.
Preparing means I understood it was coming whether I wanted it or not."
He looked at the untouched champagne.
The bucket had been discreetly removed by the server at some point — I hadn't noticed when.
"I don't want to lose you," Ryan said.
I set my spoon down.
"I know you believe that," I said.
"I think you genuinely believe it right now, sitting here, with your mother not looking at you and my brother watching you and sixty-three thousand dollars sitting in an account you opened in secret." I folded my napkin.
"But you didn't believe it fourteen months ago when you started seeing Tara.
And you didn't believe it when you edited that schedule.
And you didn't believe it last February when you told me we couldn't afford Portugal."
"People make mistakes—"
"Ryan." I said his name the way you say it when you're done.
Not loudly.
Just done.
"A mistake is forgetting an anniversary.
A mistake is saying something cruel in an argument and apologizing for it.
What you built over the last two years was not a mistake.
It was a structure.
It had accounts and schedules and cover stories and a woman who thought she was waiting for a divorce that was almost final." I looked at him.
"You built something.
I just didn't know I was living inside it."
His phone buzzed on the table.
We both looked at it.
Tara again.
*I'm sending you something tonight.
She should see it.
I'm sorry, Ryan.
You should have told her yourself.*
Ryan's hand moved toward the phone.
I put mine over his.
"Don't," I said.
He looked at me.
"Whatever she's sending," I said, "I'll see it when she sends it.
You don't get to manage that too."
He pulled his hand back.
At 8:34, my own phone buzzed in my bag.
I didn't take it out.
I finished my first course, made conversation with Ryan's aunt about her garden in Ohio, and listened to my mother tell the table about the Christmas she had gotten lost driving to my grandmother's house in a snowstorm and arrived three hours late to a meal that had been kept warm on the stove.
At 8:51, when the main course arrived, I excused myself to the restroom.
I stood at the sink and opened Tara's message.
It was a screenshot.
A conversation between Ryan and a man named Joel — a friend from college I had met twice at parties.
The conversation was dated eleven months ago.
*Joel: does Emily know yet*
*Ryan: no*
*Joel: when are you going to tell her*
*Ryan: when the account's big enough.
easier to leave if there's something to leave with*
*Joel: what's the number*
*Ryan: 80 probably.
maybe 100*
*Joel: and tara*
*Ryan: tara thinks she's the plan.
she's not the plan.
she's just easier than going home*
I read it twice.
She's not the plan.
She's just easier than going home.
I put my phone back in my bag.
I ran cold water over my wrists the way my mother had taught me when I was small and overwhelmed.
I looked at my face in the mirror.
Same face as seven days ago.
Same face as three years ago, standing in a different mirror in a white dress, believing in something that had already been quietly, methodically dismantled before it had a chance to become real.
I dried my hands.
I walked back to the table.
I sat down across from my husband.
"She sent it," I said.
He knew from my face that I had read it.
"Emily—"
"Eighty thousand," I said.
"That was the number.
Maybe a hundred.
Easier to leave if there's something to leave with." I picked up my fork.
"Tara wasn't the plan.
She was just easier than going home."
The table had gone quiet again.
Not all of it — the far tables were still talking, still eating.
But the booth, and the two tables immediately beside it, had heard enough.
Ryan said nothing.
"I want you to know," I said, "that I'm not going to cry at this table.
I'm not going to make a scene.
I'm going to finish this meal that you paid for, and then I'm going to go home, and then Grace Holloway is going to do her job."
His mother reached across and touched my arm.
I put my hand over hers and held it there.
Ryan looked at the window.
The river.
May you like
The dark.
He had nothing left to protect.
