Chapter 3 — Breakfast for Someone Else

On my birthday, Audrey left the office at four.

She sent me a photograph of herself in the elevator, holding a grocery bag.

“No emergencies tonight,” she wrote.

I replied with a picture of the timeline on my editing screen.

“Good. I’m losing an argument with a fisherman.”

She called immediately.

“What’s he done?”

“Answered a question in eight minutes that the director wants in twelve seconds.”

Audrey laughed.

“Come home. I’ll make you a better offer.”

For a while, I let that be enough.

When I arrived, the dining table was set for two.

There were candles, roasted potatoes, and the lemon chicken she made when she wanted to cook something she knew I would like. A cake sat beneath an overturned mixing bowl on the counter.

Audrey stood at the stove wearing an old green shirt of mine.

“I was going to shower,” she said. “Then the potatoes got complicated.”

“Potatoes usually do.”

She came over and kissed me.

It wasn’t the quick kiss of someone halfway out the door.

I put my arms around her.

The kitchen smelled like garlic and butter. There was flour on her sleeve, although nothing on the menu seemed to require it.

“The cake,” she explained when she saw me looking. “Don’t inspect it too closely.”

“I won’t.”

At dinner, she asked about the Northlight project.

I told her about an interview I had finally made work, cutting around a question so the answer could stand on its own.

“Does Vivian like it?”

“She hasn’t seen the new version.”

“You seem happier working with her.”

“I’m happier working.”

Audrey nodded.

“I know I haven’t made much room for that.”

It was such a simple admission that I had to set down my fork.

“I didn’t want you to make room for me,” I said. “I wanted us to share it.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.”

And I did.

That was what made the next part so difficult to stop replaying.

She brought out the cake.

The icing had slumped on one side. Thirty-two was written in uneven blue numbers.

I laughed.

“I told you not to inspect it.”

“It’s perfect.”

She lit the candles and turned off the overhead light.

“Make a wish.”

I closed my eyes.

Her phone vibrated.

Once.

Then twice more.

When I opened my eyes, she was looking down at it.

“Everything okay?”

“Yes.”

She flipped it facedown.

I blew out the candles.

Audrey cut the cake, gave me the larger piece, then reached for her phone again.

A minute later, she typed a reply.

I watched her thumb move.

“Audrey.”

She put it down.

“Sorry.”

We ate.

The phone vibrated against the table.

This time, she stood.

“What is it?”

“A problem with a filing.”

“Tonight?”

“I know.”

She was already moving toward the bedroom.

I followed her as far as the hall.

“Can someone else handle it?”

“It’s something I supervised. I need to look at it.”

“From here?”

She pulled her blouse from the closet.

“I need the documents.”

“Your laptop’s on the table.”

“Miles, please. I’m trying to keep this from turning into a disaster.”

The words landed sharply.

She saw my face and softened.

“I’ll be back in an hour.”

“You said there wouldn’t be emergencies.”

“I didn’t plan this.”

Neither did I, I wanted to say.

But she was putting on her shoes.

At the door, she kissed my cheek.

“Don’t put the cake away. I want another piece when I get back.”

Then she was gone.

I stood in the hallway until I heard the building door close.

Her laptop was still open on the dining table.

We used it for grocery orders, travel plans, television when the bedroom screen stopped working. Our counselor had specifically warned us against turning ordinary devices into traps and tests.

I hadn’t gone through it.

I sat down to blow out the candle she had missed.

A message appeared in the corner of the screen.

Tyler Shaw.

“Audrey? Are you almost here? I’m shaking.”

I stared at it.

Another followed.

“I know you’re mad. I didn’t know who else to call.”

I clicked the notification.

The conversation opened in the browser.

His message from fifteen minutes earlier filled the screen.

“I tried cooking. The pan caught fire. I got it out but there’s smoke everywhere and I think I burned my hand.”

Audrey had replied almost immediately.

“Are you outside?”

Then:

“Call emergency services if there’s still fire. Don’t go back in.”

His answer came several minutes later.

“It’s out. I’m fine. Please don’t make me deal with this alone.”

Audrey had written:

“Send me your address.”

I scrolled.

There were messages from that morning.

And the day before.

And the day before that.

The work email hadn’t been an isolated lapse.

It had been a way back in.

At first, the messages concerned briefs and citations. Audrey’s replies were short. Twice, she told him to ask his supervisor.

Then he began attaching other things.

A photograph of an empty refrigerator.

A joke about living on crackers.

A question about whether a gray coat made him look twelve.

She replied to that one with a laughing face.

By the following week, he was messaging before she left for work.

“Did you sleep?”

“Not enough,” she had answered.

“Because of me?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

I read until the cake on my plate had dried at the edges.

There was no single message I could point to and make the whole marriage intelligible.

There were hundreds of small choices.

Audrey answering him during appointments we had made to repair what he had already helped damage.

Audrey telling him things she had stopped telling me.

Tyler asking, “Does Miles know you’re still helping me?”

Her answer:

“There’s nothing to know.”

I saved the conversation where it was available to export, then captured the messages that explained tonight.

I kept the originals with their dates.

After that, I closed the laptop.

At ten twenty, I called her.

She answered on the fifth ring.

“Hi. I’m sorry, this is taking longer than I thought.”

“How’s the filing?”

A pause.

“Complicated.”

“Are you at the office?”

“Yes.”

I looked at the messages I had just saved.

“All right.”

“I’ll call when I’m leaving.”

I hung up before she could say anything else.

For an hour, I sat at the table.

Then I put the food away.

I left the cake where she had asked me to leave it.

At midnight, she sent another message.

“Please sleep. Don’t wait up.”

I went into the study and opened Rachel Moreno’s contact details.

I wrote that I needed a follow-up appointment.

This time, I wasn’t asking whether my concerns were reasonable.

I wanted to know what I should do next.

At two, I packed a bag.

At three, I tried lying down.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Audrey changing out of my green shirt so she could go take care of him.

At six forty, I got up and made coffee.

There had been a time when seven in the morning was our safest hour.

Early in our marriage, after a night when I woke from a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep, Audrey stayed in the kitchen with me until dawn.

She burned the first batch of toast.

The second was better.

Then she made eggs, sliding them onto a plate as if feeding me were something she could do about everything she couldn’t change.

“If I ever have to work all night,” she told me, “I’ll still be back before seven.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Watch me.”

For years, she kept trying.

Sometimes breakfast was a pastry in a paper bag. Sometimes she came home exhausted and we ate cereal standing at the counter.

I had never needed the meal.

I had needed to hear her key in the lock.

At six fifty-eight, my phone lit up with a notification from Tyler’s public account.

We had followed each other when Audrey first brought him to a firm barbecue.

He had posted a photograph.

Two plates. Eggs. Toast cut diagonally. Coffee in mismatched mugs.

Audrey’s wrist appeared at the edge of the image.

I knew the slim silver watch.

I had given it to her when she made partner.

The caption read:

“Kitchen survived. So did I. Best mentor in the world.”

I opened the photograph.

There was no bandage on the visible hand holding the coffee.

In the background, Audrey’s camel coat hung over a chair.

I saved it.

Then I opened her latest message.

“Still tied up. I’ll explain when I get home.”

The clock changed to seven.

I stood, carried my untouched coffee to the sink, and poured it out.

Rachel’s office wouldn’t open for another hour, but I already knew what I would tell her.

I picked up the bag beside my desk.

On the dining table, the blue numbers on my birthday cake had begun to bleed into the icing.

Audrey had remembered to feed him.

I locked the apartment behind me.