7. Sebastian #3
“You’re right,” I say. “But she’s still my wife and I will not lose her.”
I walk away before she can reply.
My vision is slowly becoming clouded.
I don’t go back to the upcoming gala. I go up, out, to the far rail of the owner’s deck where the wind is loud and there’s no one to perform for, and I grip the railing and put my head down, trying to breathe.
The lights of Santorini are strung across the dark as if it’s a thing I’ll never be able to afford, though I could buy the whole island and it wouldn’t buy me back the last two days.
I take out my phone. I’ve called eleven times but I call again.
It rings. And rings.
I watch a ferry crawl across the black water and I think about the girl in the sea lilies and how I had everything, I had all of it, and I set it down on a nightstand somewhere between then and now, without ever once noticing it was gone.
She answers on the twelfth ring.
“Sebastian.” Her voice is calm. Steady in a way that frightens me more than tears would. “You should be at your gala.”
“Where are you?” It comes out cracked. “Margo, baby… Please, where are you?”
“At the airport. We board soon.”
“Sandy’s with you?”
“Sandy is always with me. That was never in question.”
“Stay there. Don’t get on the plane, I’m begging you, give me an hour, I’ll get a boat, I’ll get a helicopter, I’ll…”
“The ship leaves at six, Sebastian.” Gentle. Final. “You should get back onboard.”
“You think I care about the goddamn ship?” The words tear loose. “You took our daughter and left me. You left your ring on the nightstand. You didn’t even wait for me to come home.”
“I did wait.” The quiet in her voice cracks, just once, just at the edge. “I waited five years. I waited every single night you didn’t come home and every dinner you missed and every time your mother said her poison but you didn’t hear it. I ran out of waiting, Sebastian.”
“I told you, let me fix it. Tell me how and I’ll…”
“That’s the thing I need you to hear.” She takes a breath. “I’m not asking you to fix anything. I’m asking you to let me go. For a while, at least. Maybe for good. I don’t know yet, and I need to not know without you calling every hour to force me back into place.”
“We are not ending.” I say it too fast. “Margo, we’re not. People go through hard stretches, we can…”
“See, this. This is the thing.” And she doesn’t even sound angry, which is worse.
“You still think this is a hard stretch. After everything these last days showed you, you still can’t see it.
I don’t think you’re cruel, Sebastian. But I do think you’re blind, and I think you got so good at not looking at me that you genuinely don’t know what you did. ”
“Then tell me.” My throat is closing. “Tell me what I did. I’ll carry it, whatever it is, just say it.”
There’s a silence, and when she speaks again it’s the smallest her voice has been.
“I wanted you to notice I was crying,” she says. “For years. And you never once did.”
I press the heel of my hand to my eyes. Below me the water is black and the wind takes the sound I make so at least she doesn’t have to hear it.
“Margo…”
An announcement drones somewhere behind her, muffled, a gate, a flight. I hear her shift the phone.
“That’s us,” she says. “I have to take my daughter home.”
“Where’s home?” My voice isn’t working. “At least tell me where you’re taking her.”
“To my parents. To Havenport, where you found me. And then, when I’ve caught my breath, to a lawyer.” A pause. “You always did know where to find me, Sebastian. You just never came.”
“Margo… Please. Don’t hang up, don’t…”
“Goodnight, Sebastian.”
The line goes dead in my hand.
I stand there with the phone against my ear listening to the nothing where her voice was, the ring biting through my breast pocket, the wind pulling at a tuxedo I was still wearing.
At exactly six o’clock, the ship’s horn sounds, and the deck shudders under me as we begin, very slowly, to pull away from the island where my whole life is standing in a departures hall with our sleeping daughter on her shoulder.
The phone buzzes against my jaw.
A notification.
The press alert my assistant set up years ago, to catch the Austen name before it could spiral.
BILLIONAIRE’S WIFE ABANDONS MAIDEN VOYAGE: Margo Austen Flees Flagship With Daughter
Beneath it, a photograph.
My wife was crossing an airport concourse, Sandy asleep in her arms, two suitcases behind her, her face turned away from a lens she never saw.
The whole world is looking at the one thing I stopped looking at.
My hand closes around the phone the way it closed around the ring, and I hear the screen give under my grip, a thin bright fracture splitting the headline clean down the middle, and I don’t loosen my fingers, I don’t look away.
The ship carries me off into the dark toward everything I didn’t fight to keep.
But I built an empire out of things men swore couldn’t be done. I’m not losing the only one that ever mattered to a headline I didn’t get to argue with.
Margo said Havenport, where I found her the first time.
This time, I’m coming to take my wife back.