By the Numbers (25 page)

“Do we start with small talk?” he asks. “I'm so rusty at this. I don't remember how to date you. It's been too long.”

“Like I'm not? I don't remember how to date you either.”

“Why don't we start with small talk?” he suggests. “How's work?”

“Interesting,” I say. “I was supposed to be promoted to executive vice president this week, except I decided I didn't want to be
an executive vice president. I declined the position, and now I'm on vacation for the next few weeks.”

He seems surprised. “You turned down the job! Why?”

“Well, when I was married, I spent a lot of time jockeying for position within my company. Too much time. I kept angling for promotions that in retrospect did nothing to advance my family. They only advanced me. My forward motion only fed
my
ego, only fulfilled
my
needs.”

“That sounds like a problem.”

“Yeah, turns out it was. What ended up happening is my job drove a wedge between my husband and me, only I wouldn't admit it because I didn't see it. Instead, I used my work as some kind of moral high ground, my get-out-of-jail-free pass.”

He studies me in the candlelight. “That had to be hard for your husband.”

“I imagine it was. Eventually, I was gone so much and so completely checked out of our lives that he ended up turning to someone else in a moment of weakness, and I was furious. I was unforgiving. I wouldn't talk to him afterward. I wouldn't go to marriage counseling. I wouldn't consider trying to work through how we got there in the first place. I just put all the blame on his shoulders. I was so mad.”

He runs his finger up and down the stem of his glass. “I can see your point. You had every right to be angry. You didn't break your vows.”

“True, but I never owned up to my responsibility for the whole situation. I was so busy being the injured party that it never occurred to me that I was just as much to blame. Today my daughter told me, ‘An affair doesn't happen in a vacuum.' She's right.”

“She sounds like a smart kid.”

“She is. I'm going to get to know her better because she's sticking around for a while. She can't afford to rent her own place, so she's planning to fix up the little apartment over the garage and move in there. That'll give her some privacy—because who wants to live with her mother, especially when her mom is starting to date?”

“Aren't you selling your house? I thought you were moving to the city.”

“I had an offer—crazy high; you wouldn't believe the number. But I'm learning the numbers aren't everything. There's no math in the world that makes me ready to sell. I've got a big new dog and a grandkid on the way and an adult kid who needs the garage space. Looks like I'm tethered to the place for a while.”

“I'm really glad to hear that,” he says. He takes my hand and begins to trace this thumb back and forth across my knuckles.

“Are you even hungry?” I ask.

“Not really,” he says.

“Thing is, I promised my mother a bottle of Boodles, and she gets antsy because she's old. She says she's not old, but she's a liar. Would you mind terribly if we just settled up and picked up her gin and went back to my house? I mean, to
our
house?”

He smiles at me. “There's nothing I'd rather do.”

I rise from my seat and hand him his crutches. “Then let's go home, Chris. Let's go home.”

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