“Who are you texting?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. “Just Marcus from work.” He sent a funny meme about the boss. “Can I see it?” His expression shifted. “Why? Because I want to see what made you smile like that. I haven’t seen you smile like that in months, Hazel. It’s just a stupid meme.
Why are you making this weird? And there it was again. I was the one making things weird. Not his secrecy. Not the password-protected phone or the late nights or the name he mentioned more than mine. Me for noticing. Me for asking questions. Me for wanting to see what made my husband happier than I apparently did anymore.
I tried asking about Sienna directly once. We were eating takeout Thai food in front of the TV because we’d stopped sitting at the actual dinner table months ago and I said it as casually as I could manage. This Sienna you mention a lot. How long has she been with the company?
Levi’s entire body went rigid. Why are you asking? Just curious. You talk about her quite a bit. She’s a colleague, Hazel, a coworker. Why do you have to interrogate me about every person I mention from work? I’m not interrogating. I’m asking a simple question. It doesn’t feel simple. It feels like you’re keeping tabs on me like you don’t trust me.
That’s not healthy. My face got hot. I do trust you. I’m just trying to understand why you mention one specific coworker 19 times in 4 days. His fork clattered against his plate. Are you seriously counting how many times I mention people? That’s Hazel. That’s not normal. That’s controlling. And just like that, I was the problem.
Not his obvious infatuation with someone else. Not the lies about where he was spending his evenings. Not the hotel receipt I’d found two weeks earlier tucked in his gray suit pocket. Kimpton Hotel, Old Town, Scottsdale, $385. Checked out at 11:47 p.m. on a night he claimed he was at a client dinner. Me.
I was the problem for noticing, for counting, for making everything weird. So, I stopped asking, but I didn’t stop paying attention. Three weeks before the gala, three weeks before everything exploded in that hotel ballroom, Levi came home actually energized for the first time in months. He found me in the kitchen making dinner and said, “So, the children’s hospital fundraiser is coming up.
It’s at the Phoenician this year.” I looked up from chopping vegetables. “Okay. I think we should both go.” It’s a great networking opportunity and your firm sponsors it too, right? You could write it off as a business expense. I stopped chopping. Levi had been to this fundraiser twice before in previous years. Both times he’d complained.
Too formal, too boring, too many speeches from donors who loved hearing themselves talk. Both times he’d gone alone. Said it wasn’t worth me taking the night off. And now suddenly he wanted me there. I should have seen it. The red flag waving directly in my face. But I was so desperate for any sign that he still wanted me around, that I still mattered to him, that our marriage wasn’t completely dead.
