Page 41 of The Marriage Blunder

Adams reappeared and announced the table was ready.

We sat. The meal was plated with surgical precision: chicken roasted to the exact second, vegetables in an arrangement that looked accidental and probably took an hour to get right. There was bread, warm, with a salted crust that I could have eaten by itself and died happy.

Kenneth poured more wine. I realized I’d already finished my first glass, a fact that explained the warmth spreading through my chest and the slow fade of my own anxiety.

“You heard from Syros today?”

I nodded. “We got the asset review finalized. The Amsterdam gallery’s tax implications are a nightmare, but nothing that can’t be papered over with enough shell companies.”

He smiled, but the smile was for the wine glass. “I’ll have to thank you in person at the opening.”

“You’ll get an invitation.”

He considered, then asked, “What about Carolyn?”

I set my fork down, took a breath. “She’s gone quiet. That’s not the same as gone.”

He agreed. “She’s regrouping.”

“She always does.”

The conversation pivoted from work to Carolyn to the ongoing chess match she was running with his board. We talked tactics, risk, the probability that she’d go for a public spectacle versus a private detonation. Kenneth’s board liaison had been in touch, apparently, and the consensus was that silence was worse than noise.

“We need to be ready for escalation,” he said.

“I’m always ready,” I said, which was not true, but sounded good.

He refilled the glasses, topped off the bread, and then, as if by design, let the talk drift into less dangerous territory: movies neither of us had seen, travel, the absurdity of New York rent.

I let myself relax into it, the way you do when the danger of the room is not the other person, but the idea that you might actually be happy for a minute.

After dinner, we moved to the living room. The fireplace had cycled up, and the couch was close enough to it that you could feel the radiant warmth on your knees.

I dropped onto the cushion and sank into the sort of comfort that suggested the piece had been chosen for function, not just status. Kenneth sat next to me, a little closer than strictly necessary. The wine was still in play, and my glass had begun to sweat in my hand.

We covered the last of the serious topics: whether or not my encrypted folder was the right long-term home for the hotel photographs or if Miles Cranston needed to hold a physical copy as well.

I forwarded the file from my phone with the efficiency of a man who’s spent the last decade backing up things nobody else was supposed to see.

“It’s done,” I said and set the phone down on the coffee table.

Kenneth watched me. “You’re good at this.”

I assumed he meant data management. “Occupational hazard.”

“No,” he said, and the word stopped the conversation in its tracks. He gestured, not at the phone, but at the space between us, at the whole evening. “At this.”

I looked at him, caught off-guard, and for a second, I was sure I had misheard.

He said, “I mean it.”

I stared at my knees. “Don’t make it weird, Kenneth,” I said, which was my default when the script veered off the grid.

He laughed, soft and honest. “I think it was already weird, Jude.”

I smiled, or tried to. “Point.”

We sat. The city outside threw blue-and-orange patterns onto the glass, and the crackle of the fire was a kind of metronome for the silence that followed.