Chapter 3 The Black Card

Lilian Aldee arrived at nine the next morning without calling first. She was a trauma surgeon who had been awake for twenty-six hours and walked like she was personally annoyed at gravity. She was also the only friend Marcus had never managed to frighten off, mostly because she had once told him he had "the bedside manner of a closed door."

She dropped a black card on the kitchen counter.

"Membership," Lilian said. "Forty-first floor athletic club, Wenthworth Tower. Invitation only. My hospital board has a corporate slot. It's yours."

"Lilian, I can't. Marcus—"

"Isn't invited." She folded her arms. "Shyne. Look at me."

Shyne did not want to look at her. Looking at Lilian meant being seen, and being seen meant being asked questions she had spent three years teaching herself not to answer.

"You flinched when the dishwasher beeped," Lilian said, more softly. "I watched you. You flinch when a door shuts. You check the clock before you answer me. You ask permission to sit down in your own kitchen."

"He isn't cruel to me."

"I didn't say cruel." Lilian stepped closer. "I said you ask permission to sit down. I treat people who've been hurt for a living. Not every injury leaves a bruise. Some of them leave manners."

The word lodged in Shyne's chest. She turned to the window and looked at the white lawn, at the white fence, at the white sky pressing its flat face against the glass.

"There's a word for what he's doing," Lilian said quietly. "It isn't marriage. It's management."

"Don't."

"Okay." Lilian held up both hands. "Okay. I won't say the other word, not today. I'm not going to push you out of a house you aren't ready to leave. But I need you to hear this, and then I'll shut up. None of this is your fault. You didn't fail at being a wife. You were managed. There's a difference, and one day you'll feel it."

Shyne's eyes burned, not from hurt or any physical pain, neither was it from tears trying to well up in her eyes because she no longer cried. She had stopped crying in front of people a long time ago, including her best friend, Lillian.

She has learned to act strong in the presence of others, however, that strength becomes nothing but standing on jelly legs, in the presence of Marcus.

"One hour," Lilian said. "Hit something. Sweat. Remember you have a body that belongs to you."

Shyne looked at the card. Black, no logo, only a silver W pressed into the plastic, cool and heavy in the light.

She had not decided to say yes. However, she thought to herself, that it would not be such a bad idea to hit a punching bag in the Gym and pretented it was Marcus's face.

The thought brought a small and almost sad smile to her face.

She only noticed, later, that her hand had already closed over it.

The card was black, and still warm from her hand. In her three years of marriage, she had never kept a secret from her husband.

She was about to start.