The lake lies lower tonight, ribs of stone showing like a diagram nobody asked to study. Dams up-cascade pulled the level again; the HOA listserv is already arguing whether exposed rocks are “unaesthetic hazards” or “natural amenities.” The Glass House loves a debate it can reflect. I open the doors to the deck anyway and let ozone from a passing squall slip inside. Cedar from the overdesigned closet clings to my sleeves, clean and expensive and hard to wash out.
I plate dinner the way I learned to plate interviews—neat portions, no stray sauce, symmetry that makes people speak. Lemon halibut, charred broccolini, barley with olives. Knives line up like rules.
Julian comes in no heavier than the last time I weighed him with my eyes. His cufflinks glint: little rooks, matte and confident. “Smells good,” he says, kissing the air an inch from my cheek. “Board loved the talking points.”
“Live-captioned toasts still in fashion?” I ask, setting down water. The glasses fog at the rim, cool against my wrist. The room hums with appliance breath.
“Donor salons are museums now,” he says, loosening his tie. “Curation is half the philanthropy.”
I smile because I have to. “We should curate dessert.”
We sit. Knives wait. Forks pretend they don’t know their future. I cut a perfect bite and park it on the fork and don’t lift it. He notices; he doesn’t ask.
“I met an old colleague today,” I say, casual as salt. “She and her partner just finished an adoption home study. She looked… lighter.”
“Lighter because she outsourced a problem,” he says, laughing into his water. “That’s what the best systems do.”
I keep my fork parked. “What would we look like, ten years from now, if we went that way? Not bio, just… a door we walked through purposely.”
His hand releases the napkin with the grace he uses on stage. He doesn’t look at me when he says it, which is how I know it was ready before I asked. “We are freer without… liabilities.”
The word lands like a coin on marble. It rings, then rolls.
“Liabilities?” I ask, tasting lemon that hasn’t touched my mouth. “Kids are an audit to you?”
“Don’t dramatize,” he says, smiling. “You know the language. I mean time, attention, risk vectors. We are more agile without them. I’m not saying never; I’m saying brand and board realities prefer us light.”
“Board realities,” I repeat, hearing paper flit under glass. “What about life realities?”
He leans back. The lake sends a small slap to the deck pilings, a petty sound that comforts me. “Choosing less is an ethic, Lena. It calibrates us. Anything else triggers scrutiny we don’t need.”
“Audit triggers?” I offer, and this time he laughs properly.
“Exactly,” he says. “You do remember our prenup better than I feared.”
I drink water I don’t want and count to five because Tamsin would tell me that silence with structure can be an instrument. “What if,” I say, soft, “we wanted to choose care more than less? Paper can be amended.”
His smile thins like a spreadsheet column being resized. “Amendments are for governments and weak boards,” he says. “We’re neither. Besides, I have something for you. A better conversation than hypotheticals.”
He goes to the console and returns with a small matte box shaped like a promise. My neck tightens where the house cameras can’t see. He sets it between our plates, right on the barley, like an altar.
“Open,” he says.
I lift the lid onto the table, careful not to unmake the plating. Inside, foam holds a bracelet: obsidian band, polished sensors like tiny moons, clasp engraved with a rook no bigger than a comma. The LED on the charging puck glows a listening blue.
“It’s elegant,” I say, and my voice stays in one piece.
“Next-gen,” he says. “Limited release. Foundation partner. The team sent two; I told them one was enough.”
“Always efficient,” I say. I stroke the band with a fingertip and let the material tell me its story: cold, smooth, hungry.
“I’ve been thinking about your wellness,” he says, sliding the box closer. “You’ve been—what’s the polite verb—tense.”
“Choosing less caffeine,” I say, smiling with my teeth hidden. “What does it track?”
“What doesn’t it?” He’s off now, unspooling features like donor perks. “Heart rate variability, sleep, hydration, cortisol proxies, glucose deltas without a prick, environmental exposures—ozone, PM2.5—and, useful for you, cycle calibration. It surfaces reproductive insights.”
The fork in my hand becomes a live wire. “Insights.”
“Just gentle nudges,” he says. “We should know what our bodies are doing when the world keeps asking for more.” He chews his first bite like he’s demonstrating how human he can be. “Also, it syncs with the house, so you don’t have to think. One ecosystem.”
Micro-hook #1 nudges my ribs: If the house learns my heartbeat, who tells it when to stop listening?
“One ecosystem,” I echo, setting the band down and letting my palm stay open like a friendly animal. “Where does the data go?”
He twirls his fork as if the question is foreplay. “Encrypted, obviously. Then into a nonprofit-labeled cloud with enterprise-grade everything. My admin can see anonymized analytics to improve user experience.”
“Your admin,” I say, eyes on the rook clasp. “Anonymous you.”
He winks, which is the part that makes me want to break something. “You could say that.”
“Does the EULA sing?” I ask, light, teasing. “I love a good bedtime story.”
“You and your EULAs,” he says, and slides a folded card from the box. “Scan the QR. Legalese poetry.”
I scan, and the poem loads: Consent to aggregate; consent to harmonize; consent to enrich with third-party demographic indicators; consent to reproductive insights and preconception readiness scoring; consent to quality assurance review by administrators. The page scrolls like a donor’s teleprompter, pure and clean and mean.
“Preconception readiness,” I read, the words scraping my throat. “And who reads the readiness?”
“You,” he says, direct. “And anyone you authorize. Like me. Temporarily.” He pushes the box until it touches my plate. “Consider it us choosing less guesswork.”
“Choosing less privacy,” I say, still smiling. “But I appreciate the gift.”
He spears an olive. “I know what keeps you safe, Lena. Data does. You taught me that.”
I lower my lashes so the house won’t read too much. “I taught you consent,” I say. “But all right. Thank you.”
He nods, satisfied that we’ve reached an accord that does not exist. He eats; I move food around my plate until the arrangement looks intentional again.
“What if,” I say, chasing barley to the fork’s edge, “we were an adoptive family in a year? Brand-light, still generous. We volunteer, we mentor, we—”
“We invite a different audit,” he says, not unkind, just final. “Spouses are brand risks already, did you know? Add a dependent and you multiply vectors. I promised investors… donors… that we’d model restraint.”
“Investors,” I repeat, and he doesn’t bother correcting his mouth’s honesty.
He pours wine, a white that smells like apples and money, and raises his glass. “To modeling restraint.”
I touch my glass to his and let the chime ring. My phone buzzes: the HOA listserv again, subject line Stroller on Sidewalk. I mute it and the complaint scurries off to die in someone else’s feed.
“Wear it tonight,” he says, tapping the bracelet. “It calibrates fastest while you sleep.”
“I sleep best after the lake,” I say. “Maybe a swim first.”
“Lake’s low,” he says, checking the shoreline. “Rocks out.”
“I’ve got feet,” I say, and smile in a way he’s always liked—competent, effortless, expensive. He smiles back, equal and opposite.
After dishes, we walk the glass corridor to the bedroom. The house kisses the lights down because it thinks romance is a dimmer. Cedar puffs from the closet like a signature scent. The bracelet’s charging puck breathes its small blue.
“You know,” he says from the doorway, “I like who we are. We aren’t trying to prove anything with a child. We’re proving something without one.”
“What are we proving?” I ask, palming the bracelet, feeling its weight like a coin I refuse to spend.
“That the future is lighter when two smart people don’t become someone else’s liabilities,” he says. “That love can be strategy.”
“Strategy is what rook pieces are for,” I say, and watch the way his cheek tenses at the word. “I’ll wear it.”
“Good,” he says, satisfied. He kisses my hair like it’s a contract renewal and leaves for a late call, murmuring aphorisms at the lake’s reflection in the hallway glass.
I close our door. The quiet is not quiet; it’s the hush of a thousand sensors holding their breath. I open my drawer—smooth dovetail, faint cedar, velvet tray—and set the charging puck inside. The blue LED paints a shallow halo over socks I keep for swimming on cold mornings.
I scroll again through the EULA to the section they thought I would skim: reproductive insights. The subclauses bloom like mold: cycle prediction, “preconception readiness,” alert to “anomalies suggestive of early gestation.” Administrators with QA permission can review “outliers.”
Micro-hook #2 snaps taut inside me: Outlier, singular: me.
I smile at the drawer, the way you smile at a sleeping cat you don’t trust. I plug the puck into the hidden outlet, set the bracelet on it, and watch the LED settle into a steady glow; the band warms, compliant. I do not put it on.
In the bathroom, I run the tap until the water cold-bites, then wash my wrists like I’m signing out of a session. The mirror reflects me and the rook-framed doorknob behind me. I lift my spiral from the towel shelf and write: Gift: leash. EULA: womb as dashboard. The red pen scratches like a match.
“You left it?” Julian calls from the hall, cheerful, unaware. “Charging?”
“Charging,” I say, drying my hands. “I’ll wear it after a swim.”
“Wear it to the swim,” he says. “Waterproof.”
“I wouldn’t want the lake to feel audited,” I say, opening the drawer just enough to admire the blue ring. “It has no receipts.”
He laughs and returns to his call. I pull on a hoodie that still smells like cedar and rain and step onto the deck. The air stings the tip of my nose. The lake mutters and the rocks grin. Across the water, donor lights stitch a curtain that won’t close.
I toe the temperature with a bare foot and whisper to the ledger in my head: Autonomy requires privacy, yet proof demands exposure. The band glows in a drawer, recording nothing; my wrist is a blank page I intend to keep.
Micro-hook #3 rises from the waterline: If I let him measure me, he will decide what counts. If I refuse, I must prove myself without becoming a spreadsheet.
I stand there, wrist naked, lake low, and hold onto a question I can’t stop asking: How do I keep access to the man I have to expose, without letting his devices write my body before I do?