The Husband Clause

Chapter 23

I find out about the press event from three different people before noon.

The first is a collector I have worked with for six years, who sends a message that reads simply: saw the announcement, interesting timing.

The second is someone from the foundation board, asking whether I have seen the piece being hung in the east corridor.

The third is a journalist I know, who calls and asks if I would like to comment on Daniel's statement about the gallery's founding vision.

I say no to the journalist, thank the others, and sit at my desk.

The east corridor. The wall I argued for the year we opened, when Daniel wanted the main hall prioritised and I said the east corridor was where people stopped, where the light was better, where the work would actually be seen.

The wall where the Morrow piece ended up, and the two beside it that I sourced, and the smaller works around them that I placed because I understood how the eye moves through a room. He has hung a new acquisition there. He gave a speech about his vision and his eye and the gallery's future.

He did not mention my name once, which is the point, so I call Cassie.

"I heard," she says, before I have finished explaining. "Don't touch it. Don't respond, don't put out a statement, don't call anyone."

"He's using the press coverage to build a public record before the legal ruling—"

"I know what he's doing." Her voice is very steady. "And next week the settlement clause ruling comes down and everything he said on record today reads completely differently. Let him talk. He's handing us the transcript."

"Okay," I say, and I mean it, or I am deciding to mean it.

"Let him talk," she says again, and hangs up before I can second-guess myself.

I come home still carrying the particular tiredness that comes not from work but from watching someone do something calculated in public and having to stand at a distance and let it happen. Christian is in the kitchen.

He reads my face when I come in — he always reads my face, it is one of the things I have stopped trying to manage — and waits.

"He did a press event," I say. "At the gallery. The east corridor wall."

Christian is quiet for a moment. "How was the speech?"

"I didn't watch it. Three people sent me summaries." I put my bag down. "He described himself as the founding visionary. He talked about legacy. He mentioned the Morrow piece by name."

"Ah." He turns to look at me properly. "The Morrow piece."

"I found it on a Tuesday afternoon six years ago. He was in Edinburgh." I set my bag down. "I wrote the acquisition proposal."

"I know," he says. "I know all of it." He crosses to the counter and pours me a glass of water and puts it in front of me without being asked.

"He's performing for a room that has already made up its mind about him. The people who matter know what they saw. What he says in a press release about it doesn't change what they remember."

I think about the collector who messaged me: interesting timing. He knows. He does not need me to say anything.

I drink the water. "Cassie said let him talk."

"Cassie's right," he says, and I set the glass down. I look at the wall. "It still feels like watching someone take something that's yours and hold it up and describe it as theirs, and not being able to say anything yet."

"Not yet," he says. "Next week." I think: next week. Seven days. I have been waiting months and I can wait seven days.

We make dinner. Sabrina comes down and helps with the salad in the particular way she helps, which involves eating approximately a third of what she is supposed to be cutting and offering opinions on the proportions.

The evening settles. The press event begins to sit lower, the way things do when the immediate heat of them has passed and what is left is just the waiting.

After dinner, while Sabrina does homework at the table, I ask Christian what he wants to eat tomorrow and he leans against the counter with his arms loosely folded.

"Actually — you and Sabrina should go without me tomorrow evening," he says. "Old colleague in town for one day, she asked if I could meet. I'll join you at the restaurant after."

Something moves in my chest — quick and not entirely dignified.

It is not jealousy. I want to be clear about that, even if only to myself. I am not a jealous person and I have no standing to be jealous of anything involving Christian, who is my friend and my legal husband and someone I told explicitly, two weeks ago, that I could not give him the same answer yet.

A person who said that has no business feeling anything about a colleague dinner. I feel nothing about it. I am perfectly fine about it.

She asked if he could meet. That is a normal thing. Women have colleagues. Colleagues meet for dinner. This is not a situation.

"You should take your time," I say. "We can drive ourselves. Don't cut your evening short for us."

My voice is entirely reasonable. There is something under it that is not entirely reasonable, and Christian goes still in the way he goes still when he has heard something I did not intend to say.

"What am I hearing?" He is looking at me with the specific expression he gets when he finds something genuinely interesting. "Is Emi jealous?"

My face does something I cannot control. "That's not what you think. I'm being considerate of your plans."

I am being considerate of his plans. That is what this is. I simply think it is important that he has a full evening and does not feel obligated to rush back on our account, because that is the kind of generous and emotionally uncomplicated person I am.

"Of course you are." He unfolds his arms and picks up his jacket from the chair. "Then I'll meet her for an hour, because I already said I would, and I'll join my two girls at the restaurant at eight."

He puts the jacket on and goes, unhurried, as though the conversation we just had was entirely unremarkable.

I stand in the kitchen and I think: he reorganized his evening around something I would not admit to feeling, without requiring me to admit to it, and he did it so smoothly that the only evidence it happened is that he called me my wife and them my two girls on his way out the door.

I also think: I told him, in an office, two weeks ago, that I could not give him the same answer yet. And I meant it. And what I just felt in my chest when he mentioned a woman who asked him to meet is not the feeling of someone who does not have an answer.

Sabrina appears in the kitchen doorway in her socks, looking at me with the expression of a scientist observing a phenomenon.

"You went red, Mom," she says, and goes back to her homework without waiting for a response, which is worse than if she had waited.

I stand in the kitchen for a moment longer and then I go to do the washing up, because standing still right now is not a good idea, and I have thinking to do that requires the cover of productive activity.