The First Husband

“I can’t believe the opening is a week away,” I said.

“Ten days!” he said.

“Ten days,” I corrected myself.

I was standing on a stepladder, Griffin beneath me, holding out a lantern to aid us in seeing a little better. He had been asking me about Jordan. He had been asking me in ways that were making it hard to avoid telling him what had happened, unless I blatantly managed to change the topic.

“And it’s only the soft opening,” he said.

“I don’t care. It’s still exciting. And didn’t you tell me the test run is almost more important than anything else? That it sets the tone?”

“Are you trying to freak me out, or is that just happening naturally?” he said.

I laughed. “Well, maybe it would relax you a little if we actually picked a name for the restaurant. Have you been thinking?”

“I’ve been thinking . . .” he said. “I’m getting closer. But, in case we don’t hit on it in the next week, the good news is that everyone who is coming to the soft opening knows where to go.”

“We do have that on our side, I guess.”

He smiled up at me in the lantern light. “Still, if I’d known Jordan was here, I would have taken a break for a little while . . .” he said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t get to spend any time with her.”

I turned from him, turned from that smile, focused on my lights.

“Maybe it’s not the end of the world,” I said.

“Well, I’d hope not,” he joked. “But she matters to you. And I want to know her.”

I felt my chest clench in that moment, at that kindness. It was a small kindness, but it was so genuine. So much like Griffin.

And, if anything, it should have moved me closer to him, closer to what I knew to be true about him, not closer to Jordan’s words. But it didn’t. Because, rationally or not, all I was thinking was, why, despite that, does our life not feel complete enough to show her?

“Don’t forget that she’s Nick’s sister,” I said.

“So?”

“Her allegiance is to him.”

Griffin drilled me with a look that I could make out, even in the dim lantern light.

“What?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought we were playing way past that kind of allegiance.”

That was the moment that I should have said, of course we are. But I was already heading somewhere far less productive. “Maybe you should ask Gia about that,” I said. “Or your mother.”

“Annie . . .”

I lowered the lights. “You don’t get it,” I said.

“No, clearly not,” he said. “But the good news is that I’m not dumb. I mean I’m not always the smartest guy in the room, but I’ve been known to get it. It and I have a really good relationship, most of the time.”

He was trying to make light of things. I wasn’t having it though. I didn’t want it to be light. I wanted it to be heavy. Suddenly, I wanted it to be so heavy that it would have no choice but to break.

My hands started to shake, the lights moving like cylinders inside of them, as I stepped off the ladder. Griffin was getting dangerously close to doing it. To reaching for me, which I couldn’t let him do. Because it would be the last straw, feeling his hands on me. And it might stop me from doing it, what I felt myself already doing. Finding reasons to burn the house down.

He must have sensed my hesitation in moving color because he pulled back, reached into the bucket, picked out some more lights. And started to talk.

“So I was thinking about you almost all day today. I mean, more accurately, I was thinking about your photographs,” he said. “And I had this idea. It may be a little nutty, but it may also be great . . . did you look at them again today?”