Page 57 of Happy Wife

And I needed all of the diversions I could find. Will had been so tied up with work since we got back from Nevis that I spent all my time with Este and Beau. We would stay up late drinking wine on their back porch while Will texted apologies. Sometimes after midnight, I would wander home barefoot just to find him in his office working on some brief or pretrial motion.

I could shake him out of his work fixation by then. A buzzed, middle-of-the-night me stopping by his home office was enough to qualify as foreplay, so he’d welcome me in and then whatever else might follow. But by the time the morning came around, Will would be gone—already at work for hours around the time I was rolling out of bed, trying to figure out how to nurse the hangover from the night before.

This morning, Este was at my house to go to the fish market on Fairbanks. Lombardi’s was a family-owned Winter Park staple where you could find fresh seafood driven in almost daily from the coast. The plan was to pick up some fish so that Beau could grill for dinner to christen the outdoor kitchen they had just installed.

“Ready,” I called down from the bedroom.

As I headed down the stairs, I sent a text to Will.

3:47p.m.

Grilling at Este and Beau’s. Want to come?

“What are we cooking?” Este wondered aloud as we looked over the glass cases at the fish market.

“Shrimp?” I suggested.

She winced and held up her recently manicured hand. “Do these fingers look like they’re ready to devein shrimp?”

I looked over the rainbow-colored rows of fish. “Wahoo? Snapper?”

Este snickered. “I’m scared for Beau. I’m not sure he knowsthe first thing about wahoo. We better get plenty of sides, or we’re going to starve.”

She grabbed a bag of crackers and opened them, popping one into her mouth.

“You have to pay for those,” I scolded.

She shrugged and threw another one into her mouth. “Minor crimes bring me joy.”

I checked my phone to see if Will had responded to my text. Not yet.

Anytime now, Somerset.

I impatiently considered texting him again, but I was so acutely aware of how Constance’s criticism of his workaholic ways had ended their marriage. I didn’t want to go barking up the wrong tree. At least I could be sure Este and Beau wouldn’t judge me for being solo. They never did.

“Okay. We’ll get the snapper,” Este said by way of surrender to the attendant behind the counter. “Can you give me adetailedinstruction sheet on how to grill it? Like, imagine the recipe you’d give a child, and then dumb it down even further.”

As we left the market with fresh fish and a step-by-step instruction guide, my phone buzzed with a call from Will.

That first-date rush lit up in my bloodstream.

Hey la, hey la. My boyfriend’s back.

“Hi,” I squealed into the phone.

“Hey, babe,” he said softly. “I just got home. Where are you?”

“Este and I are at Lombardi’s. Is everything okay?”

He sounded tired or upset about something. I checked the clock in Este’s car. It wasn’t even four o’clock.

“What are you doing home?”

“Opening a bottle of bourbon,” Will said. “I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours trying to save Fritz from a malpractice claim.”

“What happened?”

Este frowned, but I waved her off. She started the car, and we headed down Fairbanks, back toward her house.