Chapter 2

Ethan didn't come home on the night of our tenth anniversary. At ten forty, he sent a single text. [The waiter said you canceled the food and left. Lauren started panicking again at her apartment, so I'm staying on her couch tonight.] He didn't call. I turned off the porch light at midnight and went to bed alone. At seven the next morning, I heard his key in the front door. When Ethan walked into our bedroom, he was still wearing his suit from the night before. His left hand was bare. He didn't apologize for leaving me at the restaurant. Instead, he stopped beside the bed and frowned at my open suitcase on the bench. "You didn't have to cancel the entrées and walk out last night," he said. "When I went back for you and found out you'd left, Lauren blamed herself all over again." I looked at his left hand. A pale line circled the base of his ring finger where the gold band had rested for ten years. "Where is your ring?" I asked. Ethan glanced down at his hand, then walked to the closet and pulled down his weekend travel bag. "It's still in Lauren's ring box," he said. "She was still asleep when I left her apartment this morning, and I didn't want to wake her." "You left your wedding ring in another woman's apartment?" "It's in a box on her dresser, Claire. Don't make it sound like something it isn't." He began folding clean shirts into his bag. My stomach tightened. "What are you packing for?" Ethan paused with a sweater in his hands. "Harbor View," he said evenly. "Lauren can't stay locked in that apartment all weekend. She needs to get out, take some new photos, and start rebuilding her confidence." Harbor View Inn was two hours up the coast. I had booked our ocean-view room four months ago for our anniversary weekend. I had even taken on two extra design projects to pay for the terrace dinner and the coastal portrait session I thought we would take together. "That trip is for our tenth anniversary," I said. "And we'll take another one next month," Ethan replied, zipping the compartment shut. "Lauren's therapist said the first weekend after signing the papers is the hardest. She needs help re-entering normal life." "So you're taking her on our anniversary trip without your wedding ring." Ethan exhaled slowly, as if he were explaining something simple to a difficult child. "If I stand beside her wearing a wedding band all weekend, everyone looks at her like a pitied divorcée," he said. "At the restaurant, during the photoshoot, people will just treat us like two normal people out for the weekend." "You mean like a couple." "I'm going as her best friend, Claire," Ethan said sharply. "We've known each other for fifteen years. If Lauren and I wanted to be together, it would have happened a long time ago. She's like a sister to me." I kept my eyes on his bare left hand. "You don't take off your wedding ring to look like a woman's brother." Ethan's face tightened. "You're twisting this on purpose," he said, lifting his bag from the bench. "She gets forty-eight hours without being reminded that her marriage is over. I'll put the ring back on when we come home Sunday night." I stood beside the bed, my fingers brushing the thin gold band on my own hand. "If you walk out that door without your wedding ring today," I said quietly, "don't bother putting it back on when you come home." "Please don't make threats while you're angry," Ethan said. "When I get back Sunday, we'll talk like adults." He leaned in to kiss my forehead. I stepped back. His lips met empty air. For a second, uncertainty flickered across his face. Then a car horn sounded softly from the driveway. Lauren was waiting outside in the passenger seat of her car, wearing a cream-colored coat I had never seen before. Ethan looked toward the window. "I have to go." He walked downstairs, loaded his bag into her trunk, and climbed into the driver's seat. I stood by the bedroom window until her car backed out of the driveway and disappeared down the street. He believed our marriage would still be waiting where he left it on Sunday night. I didn't cry. I walked into the home office and opened my laptop to cancel the private terrace dinner I had arranged with the hotel. If Ethan wanted to spend our anniversary weekend with Lauren, he wasn't going to use the reservation I had planned for us. I logged into my Harbor View Inn account and opened the booking details. The ocean-view suite was still listed under Ethan's name. Only the second guest had changed. [Removed guest: Claire Bennett] [New guest: Lauren Cole] The terrace dinner and the coastal portrait session remained on the schedule. Then I saw the modification log at the bottom of the page. The guest name hadn't been changed this morning. It hadn't even been changed after last night's dinner. Ethan had replaced my name on our anniversary reservation three days ago—long before Lauren showed up at the restaurant crying over her divorce papers. My hand went cold on the mouse. Beneath the guest list was the payment method reserved for Sunday's checkout. My personal card had been removed two days ago. In its place was our household Visa ending in 4819, registered under an authorized cardholder name I had never seen on our account before: [Lauren Cole]