I expected an argument. Instead, Finn gave a nervous laugh and nodded.
He took it without a word.
That surprised me. He accepted the whole thing almost too quickly, like some part of him had been waiting to be punished.
At the time, I didn’t think much of it.
Upstairs, Lily wailed.
I lifted the diaper bag from the hook by the door and held it out to him.
“Lily needs changing.”
“Is the motivation working?”
He took it without a word.
I thought I’d turned Finn’s little lesson back on him.
I still didn’t know why he’d started it in the first place.
The first crack showed on a Tuesday morning, when my phone rang from the pediatrician’s office.
“Elise.” Finn’s voice was thin and climbing. “Where did you pack the bottles?”
“You are a little bit laughing.”
“I didn’t pack anything. You packed the bag.”
“I have five diapers. Five diapers and no bottles. Noah is losing his mind.”
I stirred my coffee, sitting at Maya’s kitchen table for the first time in eight months
“Is the motivation working?”
“Elise, this isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” I said, and hung up.
“How to sort these?”
Maya raised an eyebrow over her mug. “You are a little bit laughing.”
I didn’t stop being a mother. I still fed Noah at three and sang to Lily when she cried.
What I stopped doing was carrying Finn.
Near the end of week three, he found me sketching for the first time in over a year.
My pencil was moving across the paper in the shape of Lily’s small curled hand.
I didn’t.
“Els.” He stood beside the table with a laundry basket against his hip. “Can you show me how to sort these?”
I kept drawing.
“There’s a laminated card above the washer.”
“Come on. It’ll take five minutes.”
“So will reading the card.”
Lily started crying through the monitor. Finn waited for me to get up.
I bought a soft green dress.
I didn’t.
For the first time in months, I kept drawing.
By the end of that week, drool stains had become Finn’s signature accessory, and Friday beers with the guys were becoming harder to make.
“I missed Friday again,” he muttered one night, scrolling through his phone.
I noticed my own laugh.
I didn’t look up from my sketchbook.
Meanwhile, something in me started uncurling too.
I slept when the twins slept, because no one was asking me to also fold towels.
I ate food while it was still warm.
Maya dragged me shopping, and I bought a soft green dress.
I went shopping.
When I looked in the mirror, my body was still mine – softer than before the twins, different in places I was still getting used to.
But for the first time in months, I wasn’t measuring it.
I noticed the sketchbook instead.
I noticed my own laugh.
“Look at you.”
On the Friday of the fourth week, Finn was home with the twins.
I went shopping.
I thought making Finn live by his own rules was the end of it.
Then I ran into Vanessa, the wife of one of Finn’s closest friends.
“What prize?”
“Elise. Wow.” Her smile was crooked, the way a picture hung by someone in a hurry. “Look at you.”
“Vanessa. Hi.”
“So Finn actually did it.” She tilted her head. “I didn’t think he had it in him, honestly.”
I set the earrings down carefully. “Did what?”
“Those idiots?”
“Oh, you know.” She waved her hand. Then, softer, with something almost pitying in it, “I hope the prize was worth it.”
“What prize?”
Her face went pink. For a second, she looked like she was going to lie.
“Vanessa.”
She glanced toward the door. “Look, I’m not getting in the middle of whatever those idiots have going on.”
“Ask Finn what he promised the guys.”
“Those idiots?”
She closed her eyes briefly, annoyed with herself. “I’ve already said too much.”
“Then why say anything at all?”
Something in her expression changed. “Because sometimes I wish somebody had said something to me sooner.”
Before I could ask what that meant, she picked up her bag.
Something was happening behind my back.
“Ask Finn what he promised the guys, Elise.”
Then she walked out.
I stood there with the green dress folded over my arm.
I paid for the earrings with hands that would not quite hold still.
Those idiots.
“Ask your husband.”
That was when I knew something was happening behind my back, something that had found its way into my marriage.
I didn’t know what it was yet, but I was done guessing.
I picked up my car keys. It was time to get some answers.
It was Friday, so I knew exactly where to find them.
I walked into their usual sports bar and pulled a chair up to the booth where Ryan, Cole, and Mason were wedged.
Finn always talked too much.
They smirked into their beers.
“Ask your husband,” Ryan said.
I ordered water.
And then I remembered something.
Thank God Finn always talked too much after Friday beers.
The color drained from his face.
Over the past few months, he’d mentioned Cole’s suspicious late shifts, Mason blowing their vacation money on a PlayStation, and more than once joked about Ryan’s “Thursday nights.”
I’d never had a reason to put any of it together before.
Maybe none of it meant anything.
But judging by their faces, I was about to find out.
I folded my hands on the sticky table.
“What did Finn promise you?”
