We’d bought a much larger house when Violet started high school and Preston took over for his father as president of the bank. Our mansion was only minutes away from his parents which meant his mother could and often did stop by. Her home was always immaculate, and Preston would not hear of me embarrassing us both by having the house ‘out of order.’
So it was a full-time job to keep everything how he wanted. To avoid punishment, even though he often found something wrong, something out of place.
These women, with husbands and grown children, had full-time help. They wouldn’t dream of scrubbing a toilet. They had endless time to day drink and talk about their trainers, their current diet, how their husbands didn’t satisfy them. Whatever it was that they considered ‘problems.’
I did not have that time.
But these were the women to be seen with in our small town. These were the circles to run in. To keep up appearances.
“Come on, Kate,” Karen urged. “Your secret’s safe with us.”
I pursed my lips. My secrets were most definitely not safe with them. The first time I had lunch, I’d had a particularly bad day, so I’d had two glasses of wine with lunch. One was normally my limit, and even that was rare. Preston didn’t want a ‘drunk’ for a wife. It was unseemly.
But I’d been excited. Rarely had I been given leave to go out and have lunch with other women. Preston was on a business trip too. All the way across the country. I felt freedom I’d not experienced… ever.
And I’d gotten tipsy.
The women were complaining about their husbands and had looked at me expectantly.
Even in my wine daze, I’d known not to say something scathing about Preston. Certainly not the ugly truth. But I’d wanted to belong to this club. The women who laughed like they didn’t have a care in the world. Who were buffed, tanned and plucked within an inch of their lives, with big hair and even bigger bank accounts.
Yes, it felt carefree and foreign.
Belonging to something, even if it wasn’t who I wanted to be.
So I’d blurted out something about Preston leaving his socks right beside the hamper instead of putting them in.
It was nothing compared to what the other women said. Nothing.
Yet somehow, it had gotten back to him. He’d flown into a rage as soon as he got home, dragging me into our bedroom by the hair. Violet was at a friend’s place for dinner. It happened rather last minute, and it was later I’d realize it was by design. So Preston could punish me properly. For embarrassing him, making his friends think he was a “fucking slob.”
So yes, I knew not to say a word about Preston or our life together at these lunches. And I never touched a drop of wine, no matter how much the women urged.
They thought I was boring.
Which was fine.
Safe.
“If she doesn’t want to share, she doesn’t have to,” Nicole put in, defending me.
Nicole was a relatively new addition to the group. Only a few years older than me with a boy a little younger than Violet.
I liked Nicole. She was… nice. She didn’t have hair ‘out to there,’ her forehead moved when she made expressions and her life didn’t seem shiny and perfect.
She seemed beautifully flawed and didn’t fit into this group one bit.
But her husband had taken over the development for some big set of apartment buildings coming into town, and he went to the club with our husbands. He was important. So she joined the lunches. Those were the rules.
Luanne sighed dramatically. “You don’t have to be such a prude, Kate,” she said. “We’re all friends here.”
“I know, Luanne,” I said with a false smile on my face. “I just have nothing to tell.”
Which was the truth.
I did not own a vibrator. If I did, Preston would find it and punish me thoroughly. My body was his. And if he decided I deserved pleasure, he would give it out.
He knew all the ways he could hurt me and not leave a mark. He also knew all the ways to make me come loud enough to scream.