Chapter 11
1140 Words
ELENA
Liam told his mother on a Sunday.
He called her from the kitchen while I was getting ready, and I heard his voice through the hallway — warm, building toward something — and then a sound from the other end of the line that even at a distance was unmistakably joy.
He came into the bedroom with the phone still in his hand and his expression open in a way I hadn't seen in years.
"She wants us for dinner tonight."
"Tonight?"
"I know." He almost laughed. "I tried to suggest next weekend."
"How did that go?"
"About as well as you'd expect."
He set the phone down and came to where I was standing at the mirror and kissed my temple. He was a devoted husband at full volume. I looked at us in the reflection. We're a handsome couple, well-dressed, the picture of something intact and then I looked away.
"It's fine," I said. "Tell her we'll be there at seven."
**
The vitamin bottle was on the nightstand where he'd left it.
He had presented it the night before with the warmth of a man who had done research — better formulation, higher folate, cleaner ingredients, I checked several sources — and set it on my side of the bed with the satisfied care of someone who had solved a problem. I had read the label. It looked fine. I had taken one and swallowed it with my water and told myself this was what care looked like.
This morning I picked it up again.
Turned it over. Read the back.
Set it down.
Rosa appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Mrs. Carter, breakfast is ready."
"Thank you, Rosa."
She was Margaret's suggestion. She's a daytime housekeeper, not live-in, someone to manage what I shouldn't be lifting or straining over. She had been arriving every weekday morning for two weeks with the quiet reliability of furniture. I appreciated her more than I admitted to Liam, which I suspected was exactly the point.
I ate breakfast. Liam ate beside me. We talked about small things and I let myself exist inside the morning without pulling it apart.
At nine, he stood from the table.
His hand gripped the chair back as he rose, just for a moment, just a fraction longer than the motion required. The fingers releasing with a slight delay that had nothing to do with intention. He straightened and rolled his neck and said he had some calls to make before the evening.
I watched him walk down the hall.
**
The gallery was mine on Sundays.
No Petra. No deliveries. Just the work and the light and the space that knew me well.
I was in the east gallery when my phone rang.
Isla.
"There's a new place on Lexington," she said, without preamble. "Twelve-thirty. Come."
"I'm at the gallery."
"I know. Come anyway."
"Give me forty minutes," I said.
**
The restaurant exposed brick and hand-lettered menus. Isla was already at the table when I arrived, coat still on, studying the menu with the serious attention she gave to most things.
"You look better," she said when I sat down.
"I slept."
"Liam's doing?"
"Breakfast in bed last week."
She made a sound that wasn't quite anything and returned to the menu.
We ordered and some minutes later, the food arrived. We talked about the gallery installation, about a friend of Isla's who was leaving her firm, about whether the east gallery needed repainting before winter. Easy and normal conversation.
I was midway through saying something about the winter calendar when Isla's eyes moved to somewhere past my shoulder and stayed there a half second too long.
I turned.
Liam was across the restaurant.
He was moving toward a table near the back, his hand briefly at the small of someone's back as he guided her ahead of him.
The someone was Chloe.
She had a pale coat, hair down, laughing at something he'd said.
He had told me he had calls to make.
The restaurant was not large.
I watched them sit down.
Liam looked up.
Our eyes met across the room.
Something moved through his expression. It was fast, contained, resolved into warmth before it had fully registered as anything else. He said something to Chloe and stood then crossed toward us.
"Elena." He kissed my cheek. His hand was warm on my shoulder. "I didn't know you were coming here."
"I didn't either, this morning," I said pleasantly.
He smiled at Isla. "Isla. Good to see you."
He looked back at me, his hand still on my shoulder.
"Client lunch. Chloe's company is in early talks with us about a foundation sponsorship. Very preliminary." He lifted a hand. "You know how these things go."
I hadn't asked.
Isla picked up her water glass.
"Of course," I said.
He squeezed my shoulder once and kissed my temple then went back to Chloe's table and settled into the conversation before he'd fully sat down.
I looked at my plate.
The food was good but I couldn't taste it anymore.
Across the table Isla, cut a precise piece of whatever she'd ordered and ate it with the focused calm of a woman giving herself something to do with her hands. We didn't say anything about Chloe's laugh or the ease between them or the explanation that had arrived before I requested one. We were two women who loved each other too well to make the other one say something she wasn't ready to say.
Isla settled the bill before I could reach for my bag.
She excused herself to the washroom and I gathered my coat and stood.
I was turning toward the door when I saw him.
Nicholas.
He was at a table near the far window across from a man in a dark suit. Nicholas was listening with the stillness I had come to recognize as his version of full attention.
As if he felt the weight of it, he looked up.
His eyes found me across the restaurant with the directness of someone who didn't bother pretending not to notice.
For a moment he simply looked at me.
Then his gaze dropped briefly to my stomach.
And back up.
And away.
He returned to his companion without any change in expression. The man across from him kept talking.
Isla appeared at my elbow. "Ready?"
"Yes," I said.
We walked out into the cold and I didn't look back. I told myself the feeling sitting in my chest was nothing more than the residue of a strange and unsettling afternoon.
But Nicholas Carter had looked at my stomach.
And something in his face when he did. It had not looked like the contempt he had worn all evening at his mother's dinner table.
I didn't know what to think of that.
- Writer
