She was incoherent with rage.
Tom was incoherent with fear.
She didn’t know exactly why she was angry yet, and he struggled to tell her.
Tom said he was sorry.
Cherry said she didn’t want to hear it.
All she wanted were the details. Not even the details—the headline. “Summarize it for me,”she’d say to one of her direct reports.“Lead with the red meat.”
“Tell me that you’re having an affair,” she said.
“I’m not having an affair,” Tom said.
But he was, and he had been, and she alreadyknew. That he was closer to Rachel than he was to Cherry. That they ate together and traveled together. That Rachel knew where his head was at. That he texted Rachel when he was with Cherry—but he didn’t text Cherry when he was with Rachel.
It was about work. Always.
It was all about work.
But work was Tom’s whole life.
Rachel had made several appearances inThursday.
Tom said that nothing had happened. And that it had only happened once. He said that Rachel had kissed him.
Cherry wasn’t fooled by the passive voice.
She’d kissed Tom once, too, and look how that turned out.
Cherry told Tom that night, that early morning, not to come home.
(What was there to come home to? His life was everywhere else. His heart was so detached from hers that he’d handed it to a twenty-eight-year-old in a denim jumpsuit.)
When he tried to argue, she told him not todare.
“I don’t want you to come home,” she said. “I don’t want to see your face.”
She wouldn’t take his calls after that. She ignored his texts.
She wasconsistent.
Cherry would have made a great parent; she held the line. Her yes meant yes, and her no meant no.
After three weeks? Tom stopped trying.
He stopped trying.
He was probably on some deadline. He probably had meetings. He was probably jet-lagged.
He was probably sitting in first class with Rachel, planning his next book.
Rachel, Cherry had often thought, looked like the sort of girl a famous artist would be married to. Sexy. Skinny. Interesting. The kind of hot girl who dated fat indie rockers and homely comedians who eventually won the Mark Twain Prize.
Rachel was a trophy.
Cherry was just barely a first wife.
