After My Husband Drugged Me

The restaurant had candles on every table, small flames bending when the waiters walked by. Nathan picked it. Somewhere with white tablecloths and a wine list thick as a phone book. Our friends were already there when we arrived, Marnie and Todd from his department, a couple named the Hendersons who I think I liked once.

And Paloma.

She sat across from us, a glass of red in her hand, her dress the exact shade of Nathan's tie. I noticed that. I didn't know why I noticed that.

"Sloane." She smiled at me like we shared a secret. "You look wonderful. Nathan's been working himself to the bone lately. All those late nights at the lab. I keep telling him he needs to go home and rest."

I looked at her, waiting for something to land. Jealousy, maybe. A flicker of suspicion. Nothing came. She was just a woman with nice teeth talking about my husband's job.

"That's kind of you to worry about him," I said.

Her smile flattened for half a second before it came back, brighter, more brittle.

Nathan's hand found my knee under the table. I didn't know if it was meant to steady me or him.

Todd raised his glass a few minutes later, tapping it with his fork until the table quieted. "To Nathan and Sloane," he said, grinning. "Seven beautiful years."

Glasses lifted around the table. Candlelight caught in the wine, little flickers of red.

"Has it been seven?" I said.

I wasn't being funny. I was actually asking. The number sat in my mouth strange and unfamiliar, like a phone number I used to know and had let go of.

Nobody laughed. Marnie's smile froze halfway up her face. The Hendersons looked at each other. Paloma's glass stopped an inch from her lips.

"Sloane," Nathan said quietly, and I heard something crack open in his voice, thin as ice underfoot. "It's our anniversary."

"Right," I said. "Of course." I lifted my glass anyway, because it seemed like the thing to do, and the table drank, but the warmth had gone out of it. Conversation limped along after that, polite and careful, the way people talk around a hole in the floor.

I didn't feel embarrassed. I noticed everyone else did, on my behalf.

Beside me, Nathan's wine glass trembled. Just slightly. Enough that a thin red line ran down the side and pooled on the tablecloth, a small stain spreading like something guilty.

*

He started trying things after that.

Two nights later I was at the stove, stirring a pot of something, when music came on through the kitchen speaker. Piano, slow, a little sappy. I hummed along without thinking, the way you hum along to anything with a decent melody.

"You remember this?" Nathan was in the doorway, watching me too closely.

"Is it from a commercial?" I asked. "It sounds familiar."

His face did something I didn't have a name for. Like a door shutting on his own hand.

"It's our wedding song," he said.

"Oh." I turned the heat down under the pot. "It's pretty."

He didn't say anything else. He just stood there while I finished cooking, like he was waiting for me to remember something on my own, the way you wait for a kettle to boil even though you know exactly how long it takes.

The pasta came a few days after. He made it himself, which was strange, because Nathan didn't cook. He set the plate in front of me with a kind of ceremony, like he was presenting evidence.

"You taught me this," he said. "Our third date. You said your grandmother's recipe."

I took a bite. It was good. Garlic, a little too much oregano.

"This is really nice," I said. "You should make this more often."

Something in his shoulders dropped, like a rope going slack. "Sloane. You don't remember teaching me this."

"Should I?" I asked, and took another bite, because it really was good, and I didn't understand why he'd stopped eating his own plate to just watch me eat mine.

The flower came last. I found him standing at his desk one evening, a small wooden frame in his hands, something brown and paper-thin pressed under the glass.

"Do you know what this is?" he asked, holding it out to me.

I leaned in. A flower, long dried, its petals gone the color of tea. Delicate. Almost pretty in its brittleness.

"That's lovely," I said. "Where did you get it?"

He didn't answer right away. His jaw worked like he was chewing on something bitter.

"I gave it to you," he finally said. "Our first Valentine's Day. You pressed it yourself. You kept it in a book for two years before I had it framed."

"Huh." I touched the glass with one finger, careful, the way you touch something in a museum. "That's a nice story."

He took the frame back from me slowly, both hands, like he was afraid I'd drop something that had already been broken once. He didn't say anything else. He just stood there holding it, staring at the flower like it might tell him something the rest of us couldn't.

I went back to whatever I'd been doing before. I didn't think about it again that night.

I didn't think about it at all.