21. Cali
CALI
The next few days are good ones. I keep waiting for that to feel suspicious, but it doesn't. It just feels good.
On Monday, my company lands a new client.
A logistics firm out of Jersey. They move ten thousand pallets a week and can't figure out why a slice of them keep evaporating between the dock and the truck.
They read a write-up about a fraud engine that caught a supply-chain problem nobody else could see, and they called me.
They didn't know the fraud engine also caught my husband. I decided it's probably best not to tell them. Some things you keep to yourself.
I take the call in my kitchen in my socks. By the time I hang up, I've got a signed letter of intent in my inbox and a number attached to it that makes me sit down and salivate. It's not a save-the-company number, but it's definitely a build-the-company number. I'll take it.
I give myself permission to do a happy little dance. It's a cousin of the squiggly cha-cha I did in my chair the night I finished the spreadsheet, except this time, Todd has nothing to do with it.
This time, it's just mine.
The kids are thriving, too, which I do not take for granted.
Hayden has an ever-growing fixation on deep-sea creatures.
Maybe he'll be a marine biologist. No one ever prepares you for how simultaneously thrilling and terrifying it is as a mother to see your kids' futures contain so many possible versions of themselves. I just hope he's happy.
Isabella has moved on from performing surgery on her stuffed narwhal to running a full veterinary hospital out of the living room. I am regularly asked to hold instruments and pay invoices.
Thank God, they're truly okay. Todd's absence, which I braced for and dreaded, isn't the nightmare I feared it would be.
My mom has stepped up, and I've taken every opportunity to tell them how much I love them.
They ask about him less than I expected.
I think they knew a while ago that something was wrong.
Kids know. They always know more than you think.
So yeah. I'm not sure if I'm "happy," or if that's even a thing I can be anymore. But I'm doing a lot better than I was a little while ago.
It helps that, every morning, at some point before ten, my phone lights up. It's invariably the same message.
RONAN: You're beautiful, Calista Meadows.
I don't text back a thank-you. I usually send back something rude instead, because that's the game and we both know the rules. But I read each one twice. Sometimes three times, though I'd never admit it to him.
The gifts started on day two. They aren't over the top. Todd's gifts were always big and always about Todd, some watch or some trip he wanted to take that he framed as a thing he was giving me.
Ronan's gifts are small and they're truly thoughtful, and that's a much harder trick.
A box of the pralines from a shop I mentioned once, offhand, in the middle of a completely different sentence.
A book Hayden had put on his birthday list, addressed to Hayden, no note.
A tiny magnetic whiteboard for the fridge to replace the magnetic mirror he stole.
A packet of stickers for Isabella's veterinary hospital, the fancy type that look like real bandages.
Each one lands like a small proof that he's paying attention.
Ronan Akov is always, always listening.
When I hang up the whiteboard, I first put a doctor's appointment on it, because I am a functioning adult. Then, under the appointment, I write Stop being charmed.
I erase it before the kids can read it.
I'm at the kitchen island working when the doorbell rings. It's not the food delivery guy or the mailman. It's a young man in a black suit holding a large flat box and a smaller envelope.
"Ms. Meadows?" he asks.
"That's me."
"Delivery. No signature required." He hands both to me and turns and walks back down the steps before I can say anything else.
I bring them inside and set them on the table. The box is heavy and wide, tied with a ribbon. The envelope is the same cream stock as the note I found taped to my wall. I get a jittery feeling like I just chugged a quad shot of espresso and swallowed a bunch of butterflies as a chaser.
I open the envelope first. Inside is a card. Thick paper. Gold lettering across the top.
The Akov Foundation Annual Benefit.
I read the rest. It's a charity gala. Saturday night, at some ballroom in Midtown. Black tie. There's a smaller card tucked behind it, in Ronan's handwriting.
Saturday. 7 P.M. I'll send a car. Wear what's in the box. All of it.
I set the card down and look at the box. Then I untie the ribbon and lift the lid.
Inside is a gown.
It's dark green, almost the color of pine trees.
The fabric is heavy and smooth and it slides through my fingers deliciously when I lift it out.
There's no tag, no price, and no label I recognize.
Just the dress. It's the most expensive thing I've ever held, and I don't even need to check to know that.
I hold it up against myself and look down at where it falls.
I so badly want to see how it looks.
… Which, thanks to Ronan, is a problem.
I turn on instinct toward the hallway where the mirror used to be, and of course there's nothing there. Just a bare wall and a rectangle two shades darker than the rest.
"Right," I say to the empty house. "That."
I set the gown down on the table and look back at the box. There's more under where the dress was. I fold back a layer of tissue paper and my face goes hot.
Because what I find is lingerie. A matching set, dark green like the gown, though nobody's going to see it under the dress. The fabric is thin and expensive. There's lace, but not the cheap scratchy kind. This is soft. Delicate. Beautiful.
Dangerous.
I pick up the top piece and hold it up. It's beautiful. It's also very much not the kind of thing I own. My drawer upstairs is full of sensible cotton and a couple of "nice" pairs I bought years ago that have gone gray in the wash. Plus the black lace I wore on the day my life imploded.
I hurriedly stuff it back in the box like it might bite me.
It's stunning—there's no doubt about that. I'm just not sure I'm the kind of woman who wears something like this.
That's the old habit talking. I know it is. All the old anxieties are still there. Maybe quieter than they used to be, but they haven't quite been extinguished yet.
And then I think about Ronan. His face in the blue light. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever been in a room with. The mirrors gone from my walls. A text every single morning before ten.
He makes me feel like maybe I am that kind of woman. Like the version of me that can wear this and not flinch isn't some other person. She's just me, if I let her be.
I pick the top piece back up.
"Okay," I say to myself. "Why not?"
Saturday comes faster than I want it to.
My mom once again takes the kids for the night. She gives me a look when she picks them up, the radar going off, but she doesn't push. She just says, "You look nice, sweetheart," which she cannot actually assess because I haven't done anything yet, so I know she's fishing.
"Thanks, Mom."
"Are you going somewhere?"
"Just out."
"Out where?"
"Out out."
She squints at me. "Calista."
"Bye, Mom. Love you. Hayden, don't you dare try to sweet-talk Grandma into giving you soda before bed."
I herd them out the door before she can start in on me for real.
Then it's just me and the house and the dress.
I start getting ready at five. That gives me two hours, which should be plenty, except I quickly find out that getting ready for a black-tie gala when you don't have a single mirror in your home is not something a person can just do so easily.
I shower, scrubbing every inch of myself twice over. Then I towel off and tackle my hair, which I have to do by feel and by phone camera, holding the round brush in one hand and the phone in the other, propping it up on the sink again. It keeps trying to focus on the tile behind me.
The eyeliner is the worst part. It always is.
I do my whole face this way, inches from the little screen, one eye and then the other, wiping and starting over more times than I want to count.
By the time I think I've got it right, I have no real way to know if that's actually true, because a four-inch phone screen only shows you one small piece of yourself at a time.
You never get to see the whole picture. You just have to trust the pieces add up.
"This is deranged," I inform the phone.
Shockingly, I get no response.
After that comes the lingerie.
I hold the top piece up again and look at it. Then I take a breath and put it on.
The fabric is buttery soft against my skin. As I clip the bra behind my back, there's a moment where the old voice tries to speak up. I wait for it to get loud.
But somehow, it doesn't. It's a quiet little tingle in the back of my head, kind of like tinnitus, but I find more and more that I'm able to ignore it.
I wonder who I have to thank for that.
Then I put on the bottoms and the garter. And for a second, I picture Ronan on his knees in front of me, taking the strap between his teeth and dragging it down my thigh, slow, his blue-gray eyes on mine the whole time—
"Nope," I say out loud, and shake my head hard enough to mess up my hair.
I fix the hair and I do not let myself think about his teeth again. Much.
The truth is, I feel good in this. Really good. I run my hands down the front of the lingerie and I don't flinch, and that alone feels like it deserves a prize.
I step into the dress last. It fits like it was made for me, which it probably was, though I have no idea how, because I've never given Ronan my measurements.
I decide not to think too hard about that.
There's a zipper up the back that I can just barely reach, and I get it about three-quarters of the way before it stops going.
I twist. I reach. I whine.
I fail.
I cannot zip my own dress.