“Not what?” she prompts.
“Well, not that easy,” I say, and she shakes her head and scoffs.
“’Course it is.”
“There’s a prenup,” I say tentatively.
Paige purses her lips and says, “Ah!” as if she gets it now, without me needing to say anything further, but I do anyway.
“It’s not what you think. I wanted it. I wanted a clause added that there would be—” I make quotation marks with my fingers “—a substantial penalty paid out if infidelity is involved.”
Paige looks half-impressed and half-confused.
“What would make a madly in love twentysomething girl think to ask for that?”
“I caught him sneaking out of one of my girlfriends’ dorm room at three in the morning the spring before the wedding. I just had a sense about him, about his...nature, I guess,” I say.
“Hisnature. Is that what we’re calling it?” she asks humorlessly, but she doesn’t question why I still married him. “So when you saysubstantial, what exactly does that mean?”
“Well, the way it shook out, it’s about a half-million-dollar payoff.”
“If he cheats?” she clarifies.
“Yeah, but if I just leave for seemingly no reason, I mean, they say you get half, but I have never worked, you know like a job outside the house, and Mia will be off to college so it will just be me and my financially noncontributing self. Everything is in his name...and he can pay for the best lawyers. I talked to a lawyer once. I could be left with next to nothing. Which, you know what, is bullshit.”
“If I remember right, you gave up a career in journalism to move here and take care of pretty much everything else,” Paige says, sipping her wine and staring out into the inky air.
“I don’t want it to sound like... I’m making it sound... Those were my choices, and maybe I’m wrong about him,” I say, and then we just listen to the cicadas a moment. Itwasmy choice. It wasn’t a time when I was expected to be a stay-at-home mom. But I did tell myself that if life allowed me the stability to make my child my full-time job, nothing could make me happier. And when I met Finn, somehow the stars aligned.
My own single mother worked squirting perfume at people at a Dillard’s by day and took overnight shifts at Shady Brook Nursing Home at night, spending the weekends on the couch recovering from her stressful week with tumblers of peach Boone’s Farm. I was able to do the exact opposite. And I get to help people every day. I get to run charity drives and volunteer. It seems more useful an existence than shoving a mic in someone’s face just to be the first vulture to get a statement so I can boost my career. It really does. I’m needed rather than being a success-hungry nuisance to everyone I meet like I might have been in the journalism world. Paige thinks I just say this to be at peace with the simple life of a so-called housewife, but that’s not true. I mean it. I have never regretted giving up my career for the life I have.
Now, though, if Finn breaks his side of our promise, his life goes on as it is and I lose it all. He still has his career, money, the house. All of it. My contributions are what we agreed was best for our family, but on paper I’m worthless, aren’t I? It’s incredibly cruel and unjust. The cheating is one kind of betrayal, but being stripped of everything else is quite another. I sigh and sip my drink, then say, “But I don’t think I am.”
“What?” she asks.
“Wrong about him. I don’t think I am.”
“Well, you’re not very good at catching him, are you?” Paige says.
“Because I’m probably wrong—just being a paranoid psycho.”
“So wait. Back up a sec. Why would Finn, twentysomething in love, agree to this clause?”
“Mostly because he wanted clauses that said he keeps such and such investment. He was already doing well out of college and wanted to protect his money, so I got to have a clause, too. Also, he knew he was sort of caught with the dorm-room girlfriend, so I almost didn’t marry him at all. It was a strange negotiation for that age, you’re right, but that’s how it all rolled out over those months when I was ready to walk away from him. Funny, I thought that him agreeing somehow proved that he didn’t mess around with my friend like he was insisting he didn’t, but...now I wonder if he just knew he was really good at sneaking around. Or maybe that he could easily talk me into staying if he got caught. I don’t know anymore.”
“Sorry, Cor,” she says. What else can she say?
“I actually put away some money to hire a private investigator. God, that’s so crazy, right?”
“But you didn’t do it yet?” she asks.
“No, ’cause I feel like it—I don’t know—crosses, like, a big line. I just—I don’t know.”
“Well, maybe I can help,” she says, looking at me. I turn to look at her, taken aback.
“Uh, really?”
“Grant thinks I need a hobby,” she says, and we both laugh at this. “Maybe some time focusing on something else wouldn’t be a terrible idea.”
