8. Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
Alexander
Alexander drove back to Bel Air without calling the studio. His phone rang twice before he reached the house. He didn’t look at the screen. It rang again as he walked through the front door, and he silenced it without checking who wanted him.
The house manager met him in the entry hall. “Sir, will Mrs. Cohan and the girls be returning today?”
The question stopped him.
“No.”
She waited, careful and professional. “Will you need dinner?”
“No. Send everyone home.”
“Everyone?”
“Yes. You too.”
Her concern briefly showed. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Alexander wasn’t sure of anything, but he couldn’t bear to have people moving around him as though this were ordinary. He stood near the front windows until the last car passed through the gates, then he turned back into the house.
He’d walked through these rooms thousands of times. Usually, he crossed them on his way to somewhere else. His office, the garage, their bedroom to sleep before he returned to the studio. Now he had nowhere to go.
He entered the kitchen and stopped at the refrigerator.
Photographs covered one side under plain magnets Nicole had bought because she said the expensive ones scratched the steel.
In one, Prim wore a paper crown that had slipped over one eye.
Rose stood next to her with green paint across both cheeks.
Another showed Nicole on the patio with a twin in each arm, her curls loose and her face turned away from the camera as she laughed.
Alexander couldn’t remember taking any of them.
He lifted the photograph of Nicole. A smaller picture had been tucked behind it.
All four of them sat on the steps outside.
Prim was in his lap, and Rose leaned against Nicole.
Alexander had one arm around his wife and looked relaxed in a way he never did in public.
He remembered that one. Nicole had asked a housekeeper to take it after the girls refused to stand still for a proper family photograph. He’d needed to leave for a screening. Nicole had asked him to stay for one quick picture. He’d checked his watch twice.
Alexander put the pictures back exactly as he’d found them.
In the living room, a stuffed bear lay under the edge of the sofa.
It wasn’t one of the sleep toys Nicole had packed.
He crouched and pulled it free. One ear had been flattened from use, and a dark mark crossed its white stomach.
He didn’t know whether it belonged to Prim or Rose. The fact felt shameful now.
He set the bear on the sofa. A stack of Nicole’s books sat on the table within easy reach of her usual chair.
One was a thick esthetics reference book filled with bright tabs.
A paperback rested under it with a receipt marking her place.
Alexander had seen her reading there countless times while the girls played on the rug.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked what she was reading.
He moved through the house without purpose.
Nicole’s throw blanket remained folded over the back of a chair.
A pink plastic bracelet hung from the handle of a cabinet.
Two wax crayons had rolled under a table.
A family schedule covered part of a board near the kitchen, written in Nicole’s neat hand.
Alexander’s name appeared only next to a studio dinner and a Brittle event.
Prim and Rose filled the rest of it. Preschool, a dental appointment, a class party.
Prim’s follow-up after urgent care. Rose’s note to practice counting.
He stared at the schedule until the words blurred.
Nicole had built a life inside this house.
Not through the limestone, or glass, or anything the Cohan money had bought.
She’d done it with paper crowns, books, appointments, crayons, blankets, photographs, and thousands of small choices Alexander hadn’t noticed.
He’d treated that life as permanent because Nicole made it feel secure.
Upstairs, the twins’ bedroom looked as it had the night before. Their beds were made. The chair he was supposed to pull between them at bedtime remained against the wall. Their favorite books and sleep toys were gone, but several less loved toys stayed behind.
Alexander sat on the floor between the beds. He pulled out his phone.
There were more calls from the studio and two emails marked urgent. He ignored them and opened his conversation with Nicole. His frantic messages from the night before filled the screen.
“Please don’t leave me. I can explain everything. Please come home.”
He’d explained. She hadn’t come home. Alexander started typing.
“I love you.”
The message showed as read. Nicole didn’t answer.
“I love the way you laugh when you’re trying not to. I love how you smell when you’ve just put on perfume. I love your skin and the way you feel in my arms.”
Read.
“I love that you always know what I’m thinking before I say it. I love that you’re the only person who sees me instead of the Cohan name.”
Read.
He looked around the deserted room.
“You made this house a home. You made my whole life worth coming back to.”
His thumb stopped over the screen. Worth coming back to. As if returning at the end of a workday was all the family had needed from him. As if he’d even done that. He sent it anyway.
“I love Prim and Rose more than anything. I miss them. This house is unbearable without the three of you.”
“Please bring them home. Please come home to me.”
Nicole read every message. She gave him nothing in return.
His chest tightened. He typed another plea, deleted it, then wrote a longer one. He told her he could change. He told her he would make more time. He told her the girls would never have to cry for him again.
He knew the promise meant nothing before he sent it. He sent it anyway. The screen remained still. Then a link appeared under his message. Alexander stared at it. Another arrived. Then three more.
He opened the first link. A celebrity account had posted photographs from the Cohan Studios slate presentation at the Academy Museum. Angela stood pressed against his side with one hand curled around his arm. Her mouth was near his ear. He’d lowered his head to hear her over the noise.
He remembered the room and the cameras. He remembered thinking only about the presentation. In the photograph, they looked intimate.
Alexander closed it and opened the next link.
Angela and he walked out of a studio building together.
She touched his arm and laughed up at him.
Another showed them on a public street, close enough that their shoulders met.
Another caught him placing a hand at her waist while photographers shouted for them to look toward different cameras. He had no memory of touching her there.
More links arrived. Photographs from events.
Photographs around the studio. Short videos that slowed down ordinary looks and smiles.
Edits that placed romantic music on clips of them walking together.
Angela was always close to him. In some images, he appeared amused.
In others, protective. In all of them, he looked comfortable with a woman who wasn’t his wife. There were dozens.
Alexander returned to his messages and wrote to Nicole.
“I had no idea these existed.”
Nicole didn’t respond.
“I don’t use social media. You know that.”
Still nothing. He opened the Academy Museum photograph again.
The angle was bad. The moment meant nothing.
Angela had said the film needed their public support, and Alexander had believed her because she was the star and he was the producer.
He hadn’t desired her. He hadn’t even thought of her as a woman he might desire.
His defense felt solid because every fact in it was true.
“These pictures look bad, but none of this was real. They were work events.”
He waited, anger beginning to mix with his fear.
“I never wanted her. I never encouraged anything romantic. Why should the optics matter when you know the truth?”
The message showed as read. Then Nicole began sending screenshots. The first one held hundreds of comments under a photograph of Alexander’s hand at Angela’s waist.
“They have more chemistry than most real couples.”
“He looks happier with Angela than he ever looks with his wife.”
“Nicole is basically the help with a wedding ring.”
The next screenshot came from a video of Angela leaning close to him outside the studio.
“How long before they admit it?”
“She’s already Mrs. Cohan in everything but name.”
“Imagine being Nicole and watching your husband upgrade in public.”
Alexander’s stomach turned. Another screenshot showed strangers debating whether Nicole still lived with him. Someone called her a nanny. Someone else said she stayed because the money made humiliation worthwhile. A comment with thousands of likes predicted Angela would be the next Mrs. Cohan.
He kept scrolling. The pictures no longer looked like meaningless work moments.
Together, they told a story. Alexander had been available for Angela at events, outside buildings, on sidewalks, and around the studio.
He’d stood next to her, touched her when cameras demanded it, laughed with her, and given her private access whenever Brittle had a problem.
At the same time, Nicole had been home. She’d put their daughters to bed alone.
She’d handled Prim’s injury alone. She’d listened to Rose practice counting for a father who never arrived to hear it.
She’d opened her phone and found her husband presented as another woman’s partner while strangers mocked her for staying faithful to him.
He’d had no affair. He’d still made his wife look abandoned.
A final message from Nicole appeared.
“I know none of it is true, but here’s the problem with these optics. They humiliate me. You have been humiliating me for months by entertaining and encouraging this. You have humiliated our daughters.”
Alexander read it once. Then again. His first instinct was to argue. He hadn’t asked anyone to make those edits. He hadn’t read the comments. He hadn’t told the photographers to frame him and Angela like a couple.
But his hand was at her waist. He was in every picture. His choices had put him there.
Intent didn’t remove him from the images. Ignorance didn’t protect Nicole from seeing them. His lack of desire for Angela didn’t give back the dinners, bedtimes, mornings, and ordinary questions he’d missed.
Alexander looked at the love messages he’d sent before Nicole answered.
He’d written about her laughter, her perfume, her skin, her understanding, and the warmth she’d created.
He’d named everything Nicole gave him. He hadn’t named what he gave her because, outside money and private certainty, there wasn’t enough to name.
For most of his life, he’d measured himself against his father.
Alexander didn’t cheat. He didn’t chase actresses.
He loved his wife. He provided for his family.
He’d taken those facts as proof that he was a good man.
They proved only that he hadn’t betrayed Nicole in one particular way.
He’d made himself present for everyone except the people he claimed were his life.
He’d let the studio take every useful part of him and expected Nicole to be grateful for the house, the staff, and whatever tired pieces remained.
Then he’d stood next to another woman in public while his wife carried their family alone.
The story in the photographs wasn’t true about Angela. It was true about his absence.
Alexander sat on the bedroom floor until the screen dimmed in his hand.
He didn’t send another defense. He didn’t ask Nicole to come home again.
He finally understood that she hadn’t left because he failed to explain one kiss.
She’d left because his choices had been telling her for months, perhaps years, that she and their daughters could wait.
Love wouldn’t bring them back. Innocence wouldn’t bring them back. Another promise wouldn’t bring them back.
For the first time, Alexander understood that he had to repair what he’d done, and that Nicole might still decide the damage was too deep.