The Good Enough Husband by Sylvie Fox

a box. Her dad being a minor celebrity also disabused them of the notion that she somehow didn’t belong in the tony Brooklyn neighborhood.
    Elaine looked at her with a critical eye. “So you’re…”
    “My dad is black and my mother is white—like the president.”
    “Ah, okay,” Elaine said. “I was born in Bensonhurst, myself. But I grew up mainly on the Upper East Side.”
    With one sentence, Elaine had communicated that she was descended from European immigrants who had struck it rich and moved to one of the toniest neighborhoods in Manhattan. Hannah was downtown, no Brooklyn eclectic, but it would do.
    “What do you know about the ex-wife?” Elaine asked.
    “Samara?” Trap set and sprung. “Ben gave me the highlights. They were married, lived in Marin. She found someone else. They got divorced,” Hannah answered mechanically.
    “Is that what Benji told you?” Elaine asked rhetorically, cleared her throat, and pushed her empty plate and napkin forward. “I don’t want you to underestimate the devastation that woman caused.”
    “How so?” Hannah asked, trying to hide her morbid curiosity about Ben’s past.
    “Ben has always been very loyal. He only had one girlfriend in high school, one during college, and so on—then Samara,” Elaine said. “I always knew he’d be the kind of man who met someone, settled down, and stayed married forever. He’s not one of those guys I see so much of in Davis who have to bed every girl that passes them by.”
    “Oh,” Hannah interjected into the monologue—for lack som ething more to say.
    “So when Samara started dating her Pilates instructor—of all the clichéd things—we were so sorry for Ben. Two years it went on before Ben left her.”
    “I thought he didn’t know.”
    “Ben can turn a blind eye to the most obvious things, if he has half a mind. We didn’t know if maybe they were in counseling or something. I’ve been around long enough to know you can never really know what goes on in anyone else’s marriage.”
    Hannah shrugged at a loss for words.
    “I’m telling you this because I don’t want anyone to hurt him like that again. I don’t know anything about you, really, or your past—but if you’re still mooning over your wedding jewelry—maybe you’re not ready. I don’t think he could take another heartbreak.”
    “Mrs. Cooper,” Hanna started, stacking the dishes on the dining room table. “I would never do anything to intentionally hurt him. And I’m not going to poison this with the crap from my past.” At least she didn’t intend to. But who knew where things were going? Moving from the past to the future may be messy, but she was going to do her best to make a life for herself that she wanted. Hannah finished gathering up the empty dishes and started to retreat to the sink, when Elaine spoke to her back. “So, Walter and I are planning on taking Ben out for dinner at the Cove and would love for you to join us.”
    Seven hours later, Hannah strode into the little restaurant trying to exude a confidence she didn’t feel. She’d put on black pants, a black sweater, and sequined ballet flats. The jewelry that she’d abandoned for much of the trip was back in full force. Brushing by the hostess, she walked to the four top that held Ben’s family. Wa lter stood up at her approach. Ben looked up from his menu, surprise written all over his handsome face.
    “I didn’t know you were invited,” he said, pointedly looking at his mother. He rose slowly, matching his father’s manners.
    She wanted to tell him if he’d had a goddamn cell phone, she would have texted him like a civilized person. But that wasn’t an option. By the time his mom had left, he’d already left work, and she had no way to warn him.
    “Benji, I taught you better than that. Walter and I wanted to get to know your girlfriend a little better. That’s all. Now be a love and pull out her chair, please.”
    He did as he was told, and she sat. When