Page 40 of Fox
She ate a quarter of the bowl, so that’s progress.
I hold up a glass of electrolyte-filled water and a straw.
She asked me three days ago why I wouldn’t let a nurse do this, and I told her it was because I was her husband and I loved her. She didn’t ask me again.
“Managing the estate?” I enquire, and when she tilts her chin, I continue, “The Bennett family has a lot of assets and investments. I manage those. We have a wealth management company that helps us.”
She thinks about it. “But you have an older brother, why doesn’t he do the family estate stuff?”
“David is an idiot.” I sit back and look at her. She has some color on her cheeks, which is not a contribution of the bruise but rather a sign of good health. “And I say that subjectively. He can’t manage money.”
“So…what work does he do?”
“He doesn’t work. No one in my family works. They live off the investments.”
She wrinkles her nose, and I smile. She did the same thing the first time I told her about my family—how my mother and sister pretend their social calendar is charity work, which is really just code for parties and balls, while David’s full-time occupation is shaving strokes off his golf handicap and charminginvestors who think he’s the easy mark in the Bennett family. They keep thinking that, right up until they meet me.
“What?” she asks.
I shake my head. “You made that same expression when I told you the first time what my family does for a living.”
“It sounds like they don’t do anything,” she mutters.
I laugh and nuzzle my nose against her cheek, the one without a bruise. “God, Luce, I love you.”
She stiffens.
She doesn’t like it at all when I say that or call her sweetheart.
She’s also more careful with me, which is understandable because I’m veritably a stranger.
I’ve been learning this revised version of my wife, the one without the last two years, the one who looks at me with polite uncertainty and the slight effort of someone trying to catch a word on the tip of their tongue.
She knows I’m her husband, and she is taking that information seriously, approaching it with the same methodical attention she brings to trying out a new recipe. Still, there is no recognition underneath it, no ease, no eighteen months of accumulated shorthand.
There is also no resentment or hurt over what I said and did. That is definitely a plus.
She asks me questions with the academic air of someone conducting research on their own life, taking notes in some internal notebook.
How did we meet?
“At the diner where you work. Late at night, I wandered into your kitchen. You were making cassoulet.”
And now I tell her I fell in love with her that night—which isn’t a lie, exactly. I just never told her when it would have meant something. When she could have held onto it. But how could I tell her something I just learned myself?
How long have we been married?
“Eighteen months. Our second anniversary is six months away.”
What is our house like?
“Big, more than we need, but you make it homey with your many touches. And you planted a fig tree in the garden and put peonies along the south wall that my mother hates, but which are extraordinary.”
She lets out a short, surprised laugh. “Do I not like your mother?”
“She’s not very likable.”
She laughs again, and I file the sound away in the same place I have been filing everything since she woke, in the part of me that is done wasting my life with her.
