Chapter 1: Refills: 3
The pill bottle was in the inside zipper of my husband’s toiletry bag, the pocket where he keeps his nail clippers.
I wasn’t looking for anything. I was packing for him, the way I’ve packed for him before every trip for twelve years, because Nate says I fold shirts “like a hotel” and he folds them “like a crime scene.” Munich, five nights. Two suits, the gray tie, the good shoes, his phone charger, which he always forgets.
The bottle was small and orange, the kind every pharmacy in America uses. His name was printed on the label. BRENNAN, NATHAN J. Below it, a mail-order pharmacy I’d never heard of, a drug name I had to read twice, and two lines that made my hands go cold.
Qty: 10.
Refills: 3.
I sat down on the edge of our bed with the bottle in my palm and the open suitcase beside me.
Downstairs, Theo was crying because Ava had told him dinosaurs weren’t real anymore. The dishwasher was beeping because nobody had closed it all the way. My phone buzzed with a reminder about the second-grade bake sale I’d forgotten to bake for.
And I was doing math.
Eight months. That’s how long it had been since my husband had touched me with anything more than a kiss on the forehead. I knew the number exactly, because I’d stopped asking in March, after the third time he’d rolled over and said, “Hol, I’m wiped. Munich jet lag. Rain check.”
I wasn’t sure when a rain check expired. I was starting to suspect I’d never been the one holding it.
I’m not naive. I know there could be other reasons. A doctor’s recommendation. Some new confidence project at forty-three. Hope for our marriage, even. I told myself all of that, sitting there, in the voice I use on the kids when they wake up from bad dreams.
Then I thought about the refills. You don’t order three refills of hope for a wife you haven’t touched since March.
“Hol?” Nate’s voice came up the stairs. “Have you seen my passport?”
“Top drawer of the desk,” I called back. My voice sounded completely normal. I’ve had a lot of practice.
I took a photo of the label with my phone. Then I put the bottle back in the zipper pocket, exactly where it had been, cap facing the same way, and I packed the toiletry bag into the corner of the suitcase where it always goes.
Nate came in a minute later, passport in hand, and kissed my forehead.
“You’re the best,” he said, checking his watch. “Car’s coming at five tomorrow. Don’t wait up for calls, okay? Time difference is brutal.”
“Okay.”
“Kids good?”
“Theo just found out about dinosaurs.”
He laughed and went downstairs to watch the end of the game.
That night, after the kids were asleep and Nate was snoring on his side of the bed, I went down to the kitchen and opened my laptop. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Proof, maybe. A credit card charge. A hotel. A name.
Instead, I did something I hadn’t done in nine years.
I tried to log in to our investment account.
I used to be a CPA. Before Ava, I managed money for a living: payroll, taxes, a client list of small businesses who trusted me with everything. When I stopped working, Nate took over our finances. “You’ve got enough on your plate,” he said, and he was right, and I was grateful.
I typed the password. The one we’d set together when we bought the house. Ava’s birthday and the street we got married on.
Incorrect password.
I tried again, slower.
Incorrect password. 1 attempt remaining before your account is locked.
I sat in my dark kitchen with my fingers over the keyboard and the refrigerator humming, and I understood that I didn’t know how much money we had.
I didn’t know where it was.
And I didn’t know who had changed the lock.
