Page 8 of The Write Choice

A hopeful smile plays at his lips as he slides his wallet into his back pocket. “This is the start of something better. I promise,” he says, and then he’s out the door.

I stare at the door for a minute, then look back at the mostly-folded piles of laundry on our bed. It could take him up to an hour to get her home, but it’ll only take me about five minutes to get all of this put away. Dinner is in the slow cooker, and I cleaned the house top-to-bottom yesterday. Whatever will I do with my time?

A corner of my mouth tugs upward as I think about what Brandon said.

Whatever you want.

Whatever I want. The endless possibilities are daunting, but also a little exhilarating, if I’m being honest. I grab the piles of laundry and start putting them hurriedly away, not wanting to waste a precious second.

Chapter 3

Brandon

Christine’s preschool isn’t far, but on a bad day with traffic, it can take a good thirty minutes to get there. As soon as I pull out of our parking space, I know today is going to be a bad day.

I groan and tap the steering wheel. I’m definitely looking forward to leaving New York City traffic. I wasn’t sure Katie would agree to this move, so I haven’t thought too far ahead about where to enroll the kids in school out in Leade Park. I wonder if the neighborhood public schools would help to avoid the hustle and all the driving.

When we were younger, we took the subway everywhere, but that’s a lot harder with two kids. Katie and I both grew up in the city, though we lived in different worlds. She used the subway out of necessity. I used it because it offered freedom from my parents. I learned how to navigate the subway system at a very young age with my older brother, Shane. After I realized he was getting into a kind of trouble I didn’t want any part in, my best friend, Daniel, and I would use it to explore the city.

The thought of Daniel has me smirking. I should give him a call soon. It’s been a while since we talked. We used to get into trouble, sure, but it was the harmless kind of trouble kids get into. We were good kids. We met when we were around Mason’s age. But Mason has had such a hard time making friends. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because we don’t have the same lifestyle as his private school peers. Katie has been determined that the kids live a life not steeped in financial privilege; it was one of the conditions of her agreeing to marry me. But it means Mason can’t relate to kids who live in penthouses, have lavish birthday parties, and sport their own no-limit credit cards.

All of two cars make it through the stoplight ahead of me, and I hit my brakes again. I glance at the time—eleven on a Tuesday. Daniel’s new wife, Mac, is a teacher at their local high school—the one I’m going to be working on—so she’s probably at work. Daniel is probably also working, but as a now-famous writer, he gets to make his own hours. I shrug and press his name on my phone to start a call. He answers in two rings, his voice coming loudly through the car speakers.

“Katie forgive you yet?” he asks, and I hear a distant, rhythmic pounding as he speaks.

I reach to turn the volume down. “Hello to you, too.”

“I’m trying to prepare for the firestorm I’ll inevitably get in the middle of when you all move out here.” The pounding continues, though it slows down and becomes more erratic.

“You seem very certain that this move is happening,” I grumble.

“She’s not going to let you come out here alone.”

“Don’t be so sure about that. She gave me two months to convince her to stay. She told me to keep the place here, and if she still hates the idea of living out there by March first—” my voice breaks a little, and I clear my throat. “If she still hates it by then, she’s bringing the kids back here, with or without me.”

The pounding stops, and Daniel’s chair squeaks lightly as he shifts. “She said that?”

“Yes.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Is this promotion worth it for you?”

“You’ve asked me that before.”

“Yeah, but that was before Katie threatened to leave your ass if she hated it here. The stakes have changed.”

I hit the gas as the light turns green. I make it through the intersection just as the light is turning yellow again. Now that I’m through this light, I should be able to move a little faster to Christine’s school. I sigh, coming back to the conversation. “There’s not a job in the world that means more to me than Katie and the kids,” I say.

“Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence,” Daniel prods.

I rub my palm against my jaw, a few of the rough hairs of my beard catching on my wedding band. “But…” I start, then let out a humorless laugh. “It’s complicated. I’ll never move up here. If I start over at a new firm in the city, I’d have to hustle even more than I’m already doing. My parents want to step away. It’s the perfect opportunity.”

“But?” Daniel asks again.

There’s a pit in my stomach I can’t shake. “But what’s the point of any of it if Katie is miserable, or if she takes the kids and leaves me?”

Daniel is quiet for a long minute, and I drum my fingers on the steering wheel. He hums softly—a sound that means he’s getting ready to say something he’s not sure he should say. “Isn’t she already miserable?” he finally asks.

I let out a puff of air through pursed lips, my mind flashing back to a month ago when Katie came home from a fundraising event for Mason’s school. She had the smell of wine on her breath, and her words were slightly slurred. Almost eight years sober, and she gave in. I just want to leave this place, she had said when I laid down in bed with her and held her as she started crying. I just want to be fun again. I held her through all of that. The next day, I told my parents I’d take the job. It had been perfect timing to leave for Daniel’s wedding a few weeks early, both to scope out the area and get her away from New York for a while. At the time, I thought I couldn’t have scripted a better opportunity, but now, after watching her slam cabinets looking for something to take the edge off her anger—food, she had said, but I don’t know if I can believe her—I’m worried I made things worse. Talk about a catch-22.