Seventh Anniversary, He Arranged My Affair for Me

At the banquet for our seventh wedding anniversary, I reached into the inner pocket of my husband's suit jacket and pulled out a divorce plan.

The title on the first page read: How to Force a Wife With No Financial Contribution Out With Nothing.

Five minutes later, Jackson Fox took my hand and led me up onto the stage, his eyes red as he told a hall full of the city's guests:

"Vivi went through the hard years with me. I will never fail her, not in this life."

The applause below thundered.

Everyone said I was lucky, married to a man who made it big and still remembered the wife who'd starved beside him.

Only I knew the truth.

He thought I was thirty now, not young, not pretty, not one to sweet-talk him, no longer able to give him the emotional lift he wanted.

He wanted to kick me out, and go on playing the devoted husband.

The next day, a twenty-two-year-old male college student moved in next door to my flower shop.

The first time he met me, he said the one thing my husband hadn't remembered in seven years:

"Ann, you're allergic to yam, aren't you?"

I looked at his young, clean face, and it came to me all at once.

The man Jackson had lined up for me to have an affair with had arrived.

......

The night Jackson threw me the redo wedding, half the business district of Deerfield turned out.

The hotel was filled with champagne roses, my favorite, and the screens looped through old photos of us.

In one of them, twenty-three-year-old me sat beside Jackson at a night-market stall eating a beef noodle bowl, back when he owed a hundred and seventy-six thousand.

Back then, with creditors cornering him at the door of our rented place, he'd still shielded me and said:

"Ann Henson, just wait a little longer for me. I swear I'll give you a good life."

I waited seven years.

Waited for him to go from a broke nobody to the owner of Jingcheng Floral Arts, and waited until he was finally willing to give me a grand wedding.

The host asked him: "Mr. Fox, over these years, who are you most grateful to?"

Jackson looked at me, and his eyes went red in an instant.

"My wife."

"Without Vivi, there'd be no me today."

The applause below thundered, and someone held up a phone to livestream it.

"Mr. Fox is so devoted."

"Made it big and still didn't forget the wife who suffered with him. That's what a good man is."

I stood at his side, wearing the diamond necklace he'd picked out with his own hands, smiling like a truly happy wife.

But ten minutes earlier, while I was straightening his suit in the lounge, I'd pulled a document from his inner pocket.

How to Get a Full-Time Wife With No Financial Contribution Out With Nothing, and Keep It Respectable.

A few notes beneath it were bolded:

"After marriage the wife's social connections are weak. Fabricate evidence of an emotional betrayal to build public pressure."

"After the affair, walk her away with nothing. The key is to force her to sign on her own."

Jackson's voice came from outside the door: "Vivi, are you ready? The press is waiting for the couple's photo."

The door pushed open. He saw I looked unwell and immediately crouched to rub my ankle.

"Wearing heels this high, your feet are hurting again, aren't they?"

The photographer stood in the doorway, and the flash went off at just the right moment.

He tilted his head up to look at me, so gentle you couldn't find a flaw in it.

"Bear with it a little longer. After tonight, the whole city will know how much I love you."

So it turned out that when a man wants to destroy you, he can act out love this convincingly too.

After the banquet, Jackson had been drinking.

Kay Hughes, the operations director, helped him into the car.

She was twenty-six, young and pretty, in a champagne-colored gown, and standing beside him she looked like the kind of respectable image he actually wanted.

Halfway down the road, Jackson's phone buzzed.

The screen lit up beside the armrest box.

"Mr. Fox, the target has been confirmed. Deerfield University Law School, first-year grad student, Blake James, twenty-two, young and clean, matches Ms. Henson's preferences."

The next message popped up right after:

"Moving in next door to Springhill Florals tomorrow, approaching under the name of a pro bono legal aid center. Chat records, photos, and hotel surveillance can all be arranged later."

Jackson's eyes snapped open, and he quickly killed the screen.

"What are you looking at?"

I asked calmly: "Work message?"

He stared at me for two seconds, then smiled.

"Supplier business. I've got the household, and I've got the company too. All you need to do is be Mrs. Fox and rest easy."

I looked toward the car window. The glass reflected my thirty-year-old face.

Jackson smoothed back the hair at my temple.

"Vivi, you've been too tired lately. Don't let your mind run wild."

The next morning, a new tenant moved in next door to Springhill Florals.

A sheet of white paper was taped over the door: "Southside Pro Bono Legal Aid Center."

A young man hopped down from the moving truck.

White shirt, black slacks, a backpack over one shoulder.

A worker asked where to put the law books, and he took the box himself.

"By the window. And don't call me boss. My name's Blake James."

Blake James.

He glanced back and gave me a nod. Polite, controlled, careful not to intrude.

If I hadn't seen the messages on Jackson's phone, I'd probably have thought he was just a good-looking neighbor.

At noon, he came into my shop to buy white balloon flowers.

I asked, "For someone?"

He said, "For someone who helped me a long time ago."

I bent over the wrapping, and his eyes landed on the old scar on my wrist.

I held the flowers out to him.

Then he asked, "You're allergic to yam, aren't you?"

My hands went still.

"How would you know that?"

Blake dropped his gaze quickly.

"The lady next door told me. She said the owner of Springhill can't touch yam."

But on this old street, no one calls me the owner.

They all call me Vivi.

I smiled.

"Is that so?"

That afternoon, Kay came by carrying a thermal container.

"Vivi, Mr. Fox asked me to bring you some soup."

I lifted the lid. Yam chicken soup.

Seven years ago, I took one accidental sip of yam soup and my throat swelled until I couldn't speak.

Jackson carried me on his back to the ER, and afterward he set the word "yam" as a red alert on his phone.

Now he'd forgotten.

Or rather, he no longer cared.

I pushed the container back at her.

The smile on Kay's face thinned.

She leaned in, her voice dropping to almost a whisper.

"Mr. Fox needs someone who can share his load, not someone clinging to the past."

"So what is it you can share? Clients, business dinners, or delivering a pot of soup you know full well will send me into an allergic reaction?"

Her face went white.

The door pushed open just then, and Jackson walked in. He saw the red rims of Kay's eyes and his brow drew tight.

"What's going on?"

Kay lowered her head.

"It's nothing, Mr. Fox. I probably said the wrong thing."

Jackson looked at me.

"Vivi, Kay meant well."

I smiled.

"Wasn't she here to deliver your soup? How did I become the one bullying her?"

Kay said at once, "Never mind, Mr. Fox. It's only natural that Vivi doesn't like me."

Jackson sighed.

"Vivi, you never used to back people into a corner."

I looked at him.

"You never used to forget I'm allergic to yam."

He froze, opened his mouth, and said nothing back.

Jackson had brought a document with him.

"The company's preparing for a funding round. We need you to sign a licensing confirmation."

I opened to the first page: Confirmation of Rights to Springhill Floral Arts' Traditional Preservation Craft.

The agreement was written beautifully, but four words jumped off the page: permanent and exclusive.

I stared at that clause.

"This is the manuscript my mother left me."

Jackson said gently,

"Vivi, we're husband and wife. Why draw such sharp lines?"

"When the company grows, it's for this family too."

"Isn't the company all yours? Since when do you need my signature?"

He watched me for a few seconds. "You've gotten very hard to talk to lately."

After he slammed the door and left, the glass door next door swung open.

Blake stood in the doorway and gave the agreement on the table a single glance.

"Don't sign something like that."

I asked, "Does Mr. James like meddling in his neighbors' affairs?"

He was quiet for two seconds.

"This is a legal aid center."

"And how do you charge for advice?"

"The first sentence is free."

"And the second?"

He looked at me.

"The second is that your husband has no right to take what your mother left you."

As the glass door closed, I saw a black sedan parked across the street.

The window was half down, and someone inside was holding up a camera.

Jackson's game had already begun.