Page 3 of My Dead Wife's Ex Will Do
She sweeps her eyes around the living room I’ve turned into a fitness studio—cleared of furniture, mirrored on one wall, with a rolling camera rig in one corner and a stationary bike in the other—and gives a nod of apology.
I lead her to the kitchen in the middle of the apartment. Beyond it is my tiny bedroom and the bathroom that was even tinier before I convinced my landlord to let me carve some space out of the bedroom to expand it. The apartment is small, but rent-stabilized, and I’m only in NYC half of any given year anyway.
Adrienne sets her bag down, peels her coat off, and sits with the brisk economy of a woman who has three more meetings today and is already thinking about tomorrow’s. “Wedding stuff,” she says, without preamble.
“I figured.” I settle into a chair opposite her at the little round table in the corner of the kitchen. “How are the preparations coming along?”
“Kelsey has a spreadsheet,” Adrienne says. “I’m starting to have nightmares about the spreadsheet.”
“Kelsey’s had a spreadsheet for her wedding since she was eleven. I helped her make the first one.”
Adrienne blinks at me. “Of course she did. Of course you did.” She flips the lid of her insulated mug open and takes a sip. “I need to talk to you about Jason.”
Sweat that’s not from doing yoga prickles under my arms. I take a sip from the paper cup she brought me. A golden milk latte. A bribe or peace offering? Adrienne must have noticed somewhere along the way that I don’t drink caffeine after eleven a.m. “What about Jason?”
“The photographer sent over her pre-wedding questionnaire,” Adrienne says. “It’s got questions about any family dynamics she should be aware of. Divorced parents who can’t share a frame. Step-family tensions. That sort of thing.”
Step-family tensions. Not until after…well. That’s not something the wedding photographer needs to know about. “And what did you tell her?”
“Kelsey told her that her dads have always been mature about co-parenting.” She pauses, and there’s enough dry precision in that pause to fill a courtroom. “But then I realized that I’ve never actually seen you two co-parent.”
“Well, it’s not like Kelsey needs active co-parenting anymore,” I say. “She’s all grown up now.” I have a flash of a gap-toothed Kelsey at seven or eight, giggling while I chase her around the monkey bars at the playground near Leah and Jason’s brownstone.
“Okay, but I’ve only ever seen the two of you carefully, adroitly, never be in the same place at the same time.”
Who uses the word adroitly? I almost ask that question out loud because there’s no other way to respond to what Adrienne just said that isn’t either a lie or a confession.
And fuck if I’m confessing anything to my almost-daughter-in-law.
“So?” I take a sip of my latte.
Adrienne studies me with an expression that probably makes junior associates confess to billing irregularities. “So, when is the last time you and Jason were in the same room for more than two hours?”
My downstairs neighbor’s dog barks his face off for half a minute, then stops. Probably a delivery person rang the bell.
“Kelsey’s twenty-fifth birthday party,” she continues, answering her own question. “Jason arrived an hour late and you left before the cake. And before that, her college graduation, where Kelsey tells me you two sat on opposite ends of the auditorium.” She ticks these off like evidence. “When we announced our engagement, you called. Jason came to dinner. I’ve been with Kelsey for three years and I’ve never once seen the two of you actually talk to each other.”
“We talk,” I protest.
“Do you?”
Okay, the last time we were in the same room together for something unrelated to Kelsey, we didn’t do much talking. Our mouths were otherwise occupied.
I wrap my hands around my coffee cup and resist the urge to say something that’s both completely true and completely stupid, like it’s complicated.
“Seriously, Victor, what happened between you and Jason?”
The lie leaps to my lips. “Nothing hap?—”
“Victor.” Just my name, quiet, but with authority that stops me mid-sentence.
The apartment feels even smaller than usual and too warm. I focus on my breath. In for two, hold, out for four. How do I tell her that on the worst night of my life—the night we buried my best friend, the girl I accidentally got pregnant when we were far too young, the woman I’d loved like a sister ever since—I looked at her widower sitting alone on his sofa after the funeral and wanted him?
Not in the detached, virtuous, never-gonna-happen way I’d been wanting him from an enormous distance for years.
Actually.
Urgently.
