Page 20 of Neglected By Her CEO Husband

"I have been at the office," he said, "because this is the worst month the company has had in ten years. A competitor tried to burn down our lead product, I'm running a trial to prove they lied, and if I get it wrong, two thousand people lose their jobs. That is where I've been. Meanwhile, you've been ignoring calls. Do you have any idea what's going on with this company?"

"I know about the trial. I know about Brighton." I almost laughed. "You want to know how? The same way I found out about Emily. The news. My husband's company is fighting for its life and I read about it on my phone like everyone else. You'll tell two thousand strangers before you'll tell me. You don't even talk to me and yet you expect me to just keep up with everything. You don't even ask, you just complain when I finally take a step back from all the responsibilities you impart on me by osmosis to do something for myself for once."

Something went still in his face. Damon always had an answer ready. He didn't this time.

He let out a long breath. "What do you want, Maddie? Tell me what you want and I'll do it. You want the studio redone, a gallery, a show of your own, name it and it's done. Just tell me the thing and I'll fix it."

"You can't buy your way out of this one. That's what you've never understood. There's no vendor for it."

He didn't like that. For a second he looked lost, like I'd handed him a problem with no line item to spend against. Then his jaw set.

"There is nothing going on with Emily." He said it flat and certain. "Nothing. So if that's what this is, if you're punishing me for a hire you didn't like and I didn't run past you, then say it, and we'll deal with it like adults."

My eyes were hot and I stopped bothering to hide it. I'd promised myself I wouldn't cry in front of him again, and I was about to lose that too.

"You think I'm jealous."

"Aren't you?"

"It was never about Emily." I had to stop and breathe to keep my voice under me. "Emily is just the first thing in eight years too big to walk around. You found out I hadn't answered a text, and your first move was to call Reese about the seating chart. Not to wonder where I was. Not to wonder if something had happened to me." The tears came and I let them. "I run your whole life, down to the cufflinks, and you couldn't find ten seconds to tell me Emily was coming. I feel invisible, Damon. I've felt invisible in this marriage for years, and I kept calling it the deal I signed. It isn't. And the worst part is you didn't even notice I'd gone quiet, because you were never looking at me to start with."

For a second I thought I'd reached him. He looked at me like the next thing out of his mouth might not be the wrong one. I watched him stand at the edge of it. I waited. I'd have taken almost anything.

Then he stepped back from it. He rubbed his eyes, slow, like I was the last thing on a long agenda.

"You're tired. You've had wine. We are not solving eight years of anything at midnight in the kitchen." He picked the glass back up. "We'll talk when you're calmer."

Calmer.

There it was. I wasn't a wife with a point. I was a mood, and he was going to wait it out.

I picked my keys back up, then set them down, because I had nowhere to go and we both knew it.

"I'm sleeping in the guest room," I said.

"Maddie."

I was already moving.

"Maddie. Don't be dramatic. Come to bed."

I didn't turn around. I went up the stairs and down the hall, past our room, to the guest room at the end. I shut the door, and I turned the little lock in the handle, which I had never once done in eight years.

He called my name one more time from the bottom of the stairs. Then I listened to him not come up.

The guest room smelled like a room nobody used. I lay on top of the covers in my clothes and waited to feel like I'd done something terrible. It didn't come. What came instead was quiet, the first real quiet I'd had in that house in a long time. I lay in it. At some point I noticed I wasn't dreading the morning. I was almost curious about it.

I thought about texting Ellie and didn't. I wasn't ready to hand it to anyone yet. I lay in the dark with the lock turned, listening to my own house, and somewhere past two I fell asleep without meaning to.

12

MADDIE

We'd been living around each other for two weeks.

I'd stayed in the guest room since the night I locked the door. Damon never asked me to come back, and I never offered. We talked in the mornings like two coworkers passing in a hall. Coffee's fresh. Car's outside. There's a thing Thursday. He left before I was up most days and came home after I'd gone to bed.

He'd tried once, the first morning after the fight. He came down and said we should sit down this weekend and talk. I said sure. The weekend came with a board emergency in the middle of it and left again, and neither of us brought it up. That was how Damon handled things he didn't want to handle. He scheduled them for a later that never came.