Page 25 of Marriage & Mockery

She picked up a marker and turned toward the whiteboard. “Then we need new pressure points for her. Fresh delusions, different stakes.”

“That’s the job this morning,” I agreed. “We don’t leave this room until we have workable replacements or clear paths to them.”

“What about the table read?”

I shot Steven an exasperated look. He was the newest writer in the room, but the answer still should’ve been obvious. “We head to the soundstage for it, then come right back to hammer this out.”

He nodded. “Gotcha.”

No one argued further. I watched them begin, regretting that I’d made their jobs harder. But not nearly as much as I wished I’d never hurt Laina. So it had to be done.

That didn’t mean it was easy, though. By the time I left the studio that night, I was completely drained. But we’d replaced the sequence I’d deleted and come up with a few solid ideas for future skits that didn’t have their roots in Laina’s personality. It was a good start at least.

The house was dark when I pulled into the garage. Only the under-cabinet lights in the kitchen were on.

I set my keys on the counter and stopped.

My note from the morning was gone. In its place was a smaller square of paper with Laina’s handwriting.

Plate in the fridge.

3 minutes.

There were none of her cute doodles, and she hadn’t even signed it. But knowing she’d worried about me coming home hungry packed a hell of a punch.

I crouched down and let my back slide down the cabinet until I was sitting on the floor, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.

I didn’t want to read too much into this, but it was hard to not have hope when she wouldn’t even tell me where she was one week ago.

But Laina was the kindest person I knew. She would have wanted to feed anyone under her roof. That was who she was. And the fact that she could still extend even this small kindness to me after everything I had done only made my regret grow.

14

LAINA

Waking up in the guest room, I wished we’d put a king-sized bed in here instead of a queen. And not for the first time.

I’d only spent a week sleeping in here so far, but I missed being able to properly sprawl on a bigger mattress. Even if Bennett took up a lot of space when he was beside me.

Which was something else I found myself missing, much too soon. We’d rarely spent a night apart in all our years together, and I couldn’t help but wonder if part of why I was still tossing and turning at night was because I didn’t have his big, furnace of a body next to me.

That in no way meant I was ready to move back into our bedroom. My anger had mostly dulled to sadness, which was just as hard to work through.

I reached for my phone to check the time, but I didn’t have the familiar spike of dread. There had been a noticeable shift online after Bennett’s statement. As the days passed, there were fewer tags with my name. New posts were mostly about him, with people arguing over whether the statement was enough or it was just performative.

I hadn’t seen a new meme in four days. And many of the original ones had been taken down. I wasn’t sure what all Julian and Collette were doing behind the scenes beyond what Bennett had told me, but it was working.

And with that pressure off, I didn’t have anything to distract me from the state of my marriage. Opening my browser, I stared at the website for the divorce attorney Felicity had suggested I contact. Just in case.

Even at the height of my fury, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to make the call. When I married Bennett, I’d planned to be with him forever. But I hadn’t counted on him hurting me this much.

I locked the screen and stared at the ceiling.

His public statement had redirected attention, but it couldn’t give me back the version of my life that existed before he handed pieces of me to a wide audience while I had no idea. The shift online had bought me more breathing room, but it hadn’t given me clarity. And it hadn’t made me forgive my husband…although I didn’t hate him for what he’d done anymore. Which was progress, I supposed.

Heaving a deep sigh, I sat up. As I scooted to the edge of the bed, my phone rang. There was an unfamiliar number on the screen, so I almost let it go. But then I impulsively decided to answer on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Laina Parker?” A woman’s voice came through the line. “This is Collette Connelly. I’m your husband’s new publicist."