“I can’t keep up with the trends,” she muttered, taking a sip of water, eyeing his champagne greedily. She had already had her doctor-approved glass of wine that week. Did she hate him now? He often wondered that, whether it was truly hate or only ambivalence. How she would feel if he disappeared, if he cut her off, if he called up his private wealth manager and cut her, and the baby, and now the second baby, out of the will entirely, liquidated trusts, clawed back her shares of the company. Would she mutter so bitterly then? Would she grovel at his feet? Or, and these were in his lowest moments, would she enjoy it, being away from him, severed from him? Would she revel in her freedom?

And then, as if she were reading his mind, she glanced up at him, speared some salmon while maintaining eye contact, and chewed the pink flesh thoughtfully. “I want to go away for a little while. I need to see my family.” She sat back in her chair, challenging him to disagree, to prevent her from going.

He knew where this was coming from, this punishment of sorts.

He had almost drowned the baby. While bathing her, he’d been distracted by his phone. Odilie came into the bathroom not five minutes later, and the baby was under, her husband’s eyes still glued to his phone screen.

There was screaming, the phone swatted out of his hands as she dove in, grabbed the sinking child, who, now that she could breathe, was sobbing, loud, soggy, guttural sounds. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” his wife had growled, snatching her child and leaving him in the bathroom with his broken phone.

He’d felt terrible, afraid of himself, too. Terrified that this was what he was capable of when he wasn’t watching himself. Since then, he’d remained even more distant from Penelope. If he couldn’t handle a simple bath-time routine, how could he handle anything bigger? How could he handle fatherhood? He needed to do better; but figuring out what better meant proved too taxing right now.

Which was why he nonchalantly said what he did next. “Okay.” He stabbed his own fish, swallowed it with the bubbles of his champagne. Making a fuss, telling her she couldn’t, admitting how afraid of himself he was, it would only cause more disturbance to his meticulously laid-out life.

“That’s it?” she answered dully. “You don’t even know how long. I’m going to be taking Penelope, too, you know.” She still thought she could use the baby against him.

He shrugged in response. “Do what you want to do. It’s not my problem.” He felt this nasty urge to bother her, to really push her buttons. To see that scowl that would mar her face whenever she was disappointed in something, whenever something upset her, puzzled her, didn’t add up.