Chapter 2

I flattened the cream page before the applause had fully died. Beside me, Michael, my husband, kept his smile fixed on his parents and nudged my shoe beneath the table.

“Smile, Erica.” He lifted his wine again, though no one had answered his toast. “This is their night.”

His mother touched the forty-year anniversary card beside her plate. His father stared at the dark ring spreading across the navy cloth beneath my hand. Around them, the family waited for someone else to decide what happened next.

Lauren, my husband’s assistant, began collecting the place cards. She stacked each one over the last, hiding names as she moved around the table.

“Leave mine,” I said, pinning it with two fingers.

Lauren stopped with her hand above it. Her cheeks lost their dinner flush, but she moved on without a word.

Michael leaned close enough for his breath to stir the corner of the page. “The toast was harmless. You’re making everyone uncomfortable.”

“He called her the woman who keeps his life running,” our daughter said.

Her voice came from the chair on my other side. I folded her place card once and slipped it into her coat pocket.

Michael rubbed a drop of wine from his cuff with the edge of his napkin. “It was a thank-you. Adults thank people who work for them.”

I opened the notebook to the first numbered line. The black stitching held firm after six years of being pulled flat on our dinner table.

“You gave me this on our wedding night,” I said. “You told me to fill it with the life we built.”

His father shifted the anniversary card until its gold edge lined up with his spoon. No one reached for dessert.

Michael’s smile vanished. “Not here.”

“Entry one.” I kept my finger beneath the words. “Wedding night. Dinner for two left in the hotel room. Excuse: client emergency. Back before midnight.”

Our daughter pulled the ribbon from the untouched favor box. She wound it around the tiny cardboard lid while I read the next line beneath the entry.

“Time you came back: two fourteen in the morning.”

“That was six years ago.” Michael spoke toward his parents, as if they had accused him. “Keeping a list of excuses for six years is unhealthy.”

“I kept what you gave me.”

“You kept evidence for a trial no one knew they were in.” He planted his wineglass across the open entry. Red wine rolled against the bowl and soaked into the paper beneath it. “Close it.”

I took the stem and moved the glass onto his bread plate. The wet circle had crossed the date and stopped over the first excuse.

“Three hundred and twelve dinners,” I said. “Our daughter waited through most of them.”

“She does not need to hear this.” Michael pointed at the ribbon twisted between her fingers. “Take her outside and calm down.”

I tore my place card along the fold and laid one half beside entry one. On it, I wrote the number 1 with the pen from his father’s anniversary card.

Michael watched the ink dry. “Your silence after my toast was already embarrassing. Don’t turn it into a performance.”

“My silence cooked dinner three hundred and twelve times.”

Lauren dropped a place card. It landed faceup near Michael’s plate, her name showing beneath his wineglass.

I looked at her. She had not come close enough to read the page. Still, her eyes stayed on the wet circle covering his excuse.

“Was the client emergency yours?” I asked.

Lauren gripped the stack against her dress. Michael reached for the fallen card, but I covered it with the torn half of mine.

“It wasn’t a client emergency,” Lauren says. “Michael called it a scheduling crisis.”