I had always believed that silence meant I still had time.
Time to explain.
Time to make excuses.
Time to persuade someone that things weren't as bad as they looked.
That afternoon, sitting across from Michael, I began to understand how foolish that belief had been.
Claire hadn't answered my calls.
She hadn't sent an angry message.
She hadn't demanded that I come home and explain myself.
Instead, a formal request from Nathan Brooks sat on my desk.
I kept looking at it.
Three subjects.
Company resources.
Executive travel expenses.
Jasmine Cole's employment and compensation.
I understood every word.
I didn't understand how much Claire knew.
That was what frightened me.
Not the paper itself.
Not Michael's expression.
The possibility that my wife had spent time learning things about my decisions while I continued believing she would never question them.
Michael was still sitting opposite me.
He hadn't offered an opinion about Claire.
He hadn't accused me of wrongdoing.
He had simply presented the request and explained what it concerned.
I found that restraint almost unbearable.
I wanted him to tell me what would happen.
More than that, I wanted him to tell me that nothing serious would happen.
I looked at him.
"Do you think this is going anywhere?"
He considered the question.
"I don't know what her attorney intends beyond preserving the records."
I rubbed my forehead.
"That isn't much of an answer."
"It's the only answer I can give you."
I disliked hearing that.
I was accustomed to answers that led somewhere.
A solution.
A decision.
An agreement.
Michael had given me none of those things.
I looked down at the email again.
"Why ask for records if she doesn't already have something?"
Michael didn't respond immediately.
I knew why.
The question wasn't really his to answer.
I was asking him to tell me what Claire knew.
And neither of us could see inside her mind.
I read the request again, more slowly this time.
It didn't say I was guilty.
It didn't say the board had reached any conclusions.
It didn't even explain why Claire believed those particular records mattered.
But the categories had been chosen.
They weren't vague.
They weren't about whether I had been attentive enough as a husband.
They concerned identifiable business matters.
That distinction was becoming harder to ignore.
I remembered how confidently I had told Michael that my marriage was private.
I had said it as if the statement settled everything.
Now the paper in front of me challenged that confidence.
There was no reason a private affair should automatically become a company matter.
But if company resources or decisions had become involved, the questions could be different.
I understood that much.
I just didn't want to consider it.
I lifted the sheet.
"Has the board responded?"
Michael shook his head.
"Not in anything I've shown you."
I stared at him.
Again, that careful language.
He wasn't volunteering assumptions.
He wasn't giving me permission to dismiss the matter.
He kept returning to what was actually known.
I had spent years doing the opposite.
When Claire asked an uncomfortable question, I answered a different one.
When she wanted to discuss my behavior, I complained about her tone.
When she became quiet, I decided the conversation was over.
I knew how to avoid the point.
I was good at it.
But Michael wouldn't follow me.
I placed the paper down.
"What if she just wants to embarrass me?"
He looked at me.
"I can't tell you why she made the request."
There it was again.
A plain answer.
Nothing to argue with.
I leaned back and stared toward the other side of the office.
I wanted to resent him.
I almost did.
But Michael hadn't created this problem.
Claire hadn't created the choices that lay behind it either.
I had.
That thought settled badly.
For a moment, I tried to push it away.
I told myself that whatever had happened between Claire and me was complicated.
Marriage was complicated.
People disappointed one another.
Relationships changed.
Those statements were easy to say because they were generally true.
They were also useless when applied to what I had done.
I hadn't simply disappointed Claire once.
I had betrayed her over an extended period.
And I had treated her humiliation as a manageable inconvenience.
Three years.
I thought about that number.
It no longer sounded like something I could explain with confusion.
I had been given too much time to understand what I was doing.
I had used that time to become comfortable with it.
Michael shifted in his chair.
I looked back at him.
"Do you think Claire told Nathan everything?"
"I don't know."
"She must have told him something."
"Presumably."
I shook my head.
I knew I sounded impatient.
I couldn't seem to stop.
"You're not helping me."
Michael was quiet for a moment.
Then he spoke.
"I'm trying not to tell you something I can't support."
That landed harder than I expected.
He wasn't refusing to help.
He was refusing to guess.
I looked at the email.
A formal request had arrived.
That was certain.
Nathan Brooks represented Claire.
That was certain.
The request concerned records connected to my conduct and Jasmine's position.
That was certain too.
Everything beyond those facts remained uncertain.
I hated uncertainty.
I especially hated it when I couldn't force someone else to resolve it.
I reached for my phone again.
The familiar impulse returned before I could stop it.
Call Claire.
Ask what she wanted.
Tell her we should handle this privately.
Make her explain why she had gone to Nathan Brooks.
I picked up the phone.
Her name remained easy to find.
I stared at it.
Michael said nothing.
I could feel him watching me.
I wondered whether he expected another call.
I wondered whether he thought I was behaving like a fool.
That concern embarrassed me.
For years, I had barely considered how Claire must have felt when I ignored her attempts to discuss our marriage.
Now I was worrying about Michael seeing me rejected.
I turned the screen off.
"I won't call again right now."
Michael didn't congratulate me.
He had no reason to.
Leaving my wife alone for a few minutes wasn't a noble act.
It was the least I could do.
I put the phone down.
Then I picked up the paper.
I couldn't stop moving one object or the other.
The office had become a place where I waited for information.
That was new.
Usually, I was the person asking questions and expecting answers.
Usually, the people across the desk were the ones trying to explain themselves.
I had mistaken that professional position for something permanent.
Something that followed me everywhere.
It didn't.
Claire could refuse my calls.
Nathan Brooks could contact the board.
Michael could give me facts without offering the reassurance I wanted.
None of those things required my approval.
I looked toward the door.
I thought about ending the conversation.
I could dismiss Michael.
Put the paper away.
Turn my attention to other responsibilities.
For a moment, the idea appealed to me.
If I acted as though the request didn't matter, perhaps I could recover some of the calm I had lost.
But I knew what would happen.
The paper would still exist.
The board would still have received the request.
And Claire would still be represented by someone whose name carried weight in Boston's business community.
Avoiding the document wouldn't change any of that.
I asked Michael to leave it with me.
He nodded.
I watched him gather the papers he was keeping.
The one concerning Claire remained on my desk.
I didn't want to look at it.
I didn't want it taken away either.
That contradiction was exhausting.
I needed to know what it said.
I wished it had never been written.
Before Michael left, I looked up.
"Is there anything else in this request I should understand?"
He paused.
"Read it carefully, Aaron."
It wasn't the answer I wanted.
It was probably the most useful one he could give.
After he left, I sat alone.
I read it again.
Not quickly this time.
I didn't skip Jasmine's name.
I didn't skim the part about expenses.
I didn't pretend that personal use of company resources was an irrelevant phrase.
I read each category as something that might require an explanation.
Then I put the paper down.
I looked at my phone.
Still nothing from Claire.
I felt the familiar urge to complain about her silence.
But I couldn't make that complaint sound reasonable anymore.
She had endured three years of being treated as though her feelings mattered only when I found them convenient.
Now I was struggling with one day of not knowing what she intended.
I couldn't call that fair.
I couldn't even call it surprising.
I turned my chair back toward the desk.
The company still had work to do.
I still had responsibilities.
Whatever Claire intended, I couldn't abandon those obligations simply because I was frightened.
But the ordinary papers in front of me looked different now.
I had never before considered how easily an executive's personal choices might become questions that other people were entitled to ask.
Not every personal mistake belonged in a boardroom.
I knew that.
But that distinction couldn't be settled merely because I wanted it to be.
For now, all I could do was face the fact that the request had been made.
I left the email where I could see it.
And for the first time that afternoon, I stopped asking Michael to tell me how I should feel about it.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: I Kept Searching the Request for an Accusation I Could Fight, But Claire’s Lawyer Had Asked for Something Else Entirely
My Husband Called Twenty-Seven Times That Morning, But He Still Had No Idea Why I Refused to Answer
Part 5 of 20
