“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 whole 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 nineteen times in four 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, saying 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, I ignored every instinct screaming that something was wrong.
“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too eager. “Yeah, that sounds nice. We haven’t done something like that together in a while.”
“Exactly. It’ll be good for us.”
I went shopping for a new dress that weekend. Jade green, fitted, elegant, the kind of dress that used to make Levi stop whatever he was doing and tell me I looked beautiful. I got my hair done at a salon I couldn’t really afford. I bought new heels that pinched my toes but made my legs look good. I convinced myself that maybe this event would be the reset we needed, the night we’d reconnect and remember why we got married in the first place. I was so painfully, desperately wrong, but I didn’t know that yet. Not while I was getting ready. Not while I was driving to the Phoenician separately because Levi said he had to stop by the office first. Not while I was standing in that elegant ballroom thinking maybe tonight would be different. I didn’t know yet that the fundraiser wasn’t going to save my marriage. It was going to be the night I finally stopped lying to myself about what my husband had become, the night he’d tell me to walk away in front of everyone we knew, and the night I’d start planning exactly how to make him regret it.
The Friday of the gala came faster than I was ready for. I spent the afternoon getting ready with an anxious energy I couldn’t quite name, telling myself it was excitement, that tonight would be good for us, that maybe Levi’s invitation meant he was trying. He came home around five to change. I was already in my jade dress, hair styled in loose waves that had taken the salon an hour to perfect. I waited for him to notice, to say something, to give me any indication that he actually saw me. He walked past me toward the bedroom without a word.
“You look nice,” I offered, watching him pull his suit from the closet.
“Thanks,” he said absently, checking his phone.
