2. Adriana
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Adriana
Noticing things is a terrible gift when you are being lied to.
“There you are.” William says it to my reflection.
He’s by the door when I come down, fixing his tie in the foyer mirror with his briefcase already at his feet. I stop on the bottom stair in my nightgown, my robe pulled around me and arms crossed over myself, watching him in the glass.
“Good news,” he goes on, working the silk into place. “I booked us that place on Ardith for Saturday, the one you’ve been wanting. Eight o’clock. Consider last night officially made up for.”
As always, he’s already booked it with the plan fully formed for me to be grateful for while last night dissolved into a reservation with his name on it. The home-cooked anniversary I bled over doesn’t earn a mention.
“Sure,” I say. My voice comes out even.
His phone lights up on the side table by the door. A notification, then another, the screen brightening and going dark against the wood. His eyes leave the mirror and drop to it, hands still working the knot on instinct.
“You get a lot of those,” I comment. “For this hour.”
“Hm?”
“Notifications. Before eight in the morning.”
William silences it without looking and pockets it, giving me the indulgent sigh he saves for whenever I’ve inconvenienced him by pointing things out.
“Here you go again. Taking a completely ordinary thing, of me answering my emails before work, and you turn it into an issue. It’s a little exhausting, Adriana.
” He goes back to the mirror, to the tie.
“Honestly, this is why I end up staying late. It’s quieter at the office without anyone constantly nagging me. ”
There it is. However the conversation starts, it ends here, with the thing turned around and made my fault for asking. He’s good at it.
And maybe months ago it would have worked.
But not anymore.
Still, I give him the version that ends this fastest. I pull the robe tighter, loosen my arms and let the cold slide off my face. The surrender all on the outside where he can see it while underneath, nothing softens at all.
“Fine. You’ve had a long week,” I say. “We’ll do Saturday.”
“See? We don’t have to fight.” He grins, pleased now, crossing to the stairs then lifts my hand from the lapel of my robe. He turns it over to press his mouth to my knuckle.
An old gesture, the one he hasn’t reached for in a while.
I look down at his bent head and there is a shift inside me that I can only call disgust.
Because there was a time this exact kiss meant the opposite of what it means now, and the warmth of his lips ambushes me with it as the foyer tilts away.
He lifts his head from my knuckles, and the man looking up at me is younger, easier, his grin not yet worn into a habit.
“William Langford.” Hand extended, having followed me out onto the terrace where I’d gone to breathe air that didn’t have both our families’ expectations weighted in it.
Inside, through the glass, the dinner goes on without us, our parents negotiating the rest of my life over the dessert course.
“I know who you are,” I reply. “We’ve been introduced. Twice now, counting the part where they told us we’re getting married.”
“That was them introducing us. This is me.” He keeps the hand out, patient, amused. “Different thing.”
I look at the hand and don’t take it. “You don’t have to do the charming routine. Our parents aren’t out here. There’s no one to perform for, and the deal’s done whether you win me over or not.”
That, for some reason, only widens the grin. “Maybe I’m not performing. Maybe I’d just rather marry a woman who doesn’t hate me, and this is the only window I’ve got before the lawyers take over.”
I was tired of being a line item in other people’s arrangements, and that answer disarmed me more than any flattery would have. I shook his hand.
“There.” He leaned against the terrace railing beside me. “Now we’ve actually met. Can I tell you a secret, since we’re going to be married? I’m terrified of your mother.”
“Everyone’s terrified of my mother.”
“No, specifically. She asked me at the soup course what my five-year plan was and I forgot every word of English I’ve ever known. I think I said ‘growth.’ Just the word. A hostage negotiating for his life.”
A laugh came out of me, surprised and real, the kind I didn’t hand out at family dinners because I was always aware of being watched. He looked delighted with himself for causing it, as though he’d struck water in a dry field.
“Look at that,” he said, softer now. “I was starting to think you didn’t do that.”
“I don’t. Not usually.” I shook my head and looked off toward the garden, but the smile stayed where it was, and when I glanced back at him I let him see it still sitting there.
“Then I’ll consider it a personal achievement.” He bumped his shoulder lightly against mine, and left it there a beat longer than the joke called for, looking out at the dark before he spoke again.
We looked at each other in the spill of light from the windows, two strangers promised to one another, taking the first real measure of what we’d been handed.
“You know, I came out here sure this whole thing was going to be an arrangement we survived.” He held my eyes. “But maybe we can make it work. You and me.”
I looked at him, this man trying so plainly to please me with nothing to gain, and witnessing the effort of it, I gave a small, real smile, the first I’d offered anyone all night.
“Maybe we can,” I said.
His lips leave my knuckles and when I blink, the terrace is gone.
Today, the kiss is the same kiss. The exact gesture worn down to a thing he reaches for when he wants forgiveness without the cost of earning it.
I wait for the old leap in my chest, the one that used to come every time he looked at me but it didn’t arrive. It lay down somewhere this past year and went quiet. The silence where it used to be is the loneliest thing this marriage has handed me yet.
“I’ll probably be late again tonight, but Saturday’s locked in, I promise.” He squeezes my fingers and lets go, already turning for the door. “Don’t wait up.”
“I won’t.” I give him the smile, the easy one, the one that sees him out without a snag. “Have a good day.”
The door closes behind him and my smile goes with it.
All that is left hanging where he stood is the cold marble and his cologne. I stand on the bottom stair a moment longer, listening to his car start in the drive and pull away.
Then I turn toward the kitchen.
“Renata.” My voice comes out certain, one I haven’t used in this house in longer than I can remember. “Have the driver bring the car around. I’m going out.”
If my husband won’t tell me where he spends his afternoons, then I’ll go and see for myself.
***
The elevator doors part on the executive floor and I step out into the late-afternoon hush.
I push my glasses up into my hair as I walk into his office unannounced.
Heads lift as I pass. A junior associate I don’t recognize does a small double take and busies himself with a folder. Near the copier, a woman from accounts half-rises from her chair.
“Madam.” She sounds startled. “We didn’t know you were coming in today.”
“Just passing through.” I give her a gracious smile and don’t slow down.
Halfway down the hall toward William’s door, a familiar face comes out of the file room and nearly walks into me.
Blythe Delaney, William’s secretary. Although I’m the one who found her, back when I still had my hands in the running of things. I taught her about the company before I stepped back from all of it. She’s still the one bright thing in this office my family didn’t choose for me.
“Miss Adriana!” Surprise flashes across her face first before it gives way to a sweet smile, her whole face lighting up in the space of a breath. “Oh, I had no idea you’d be stopping by today. You look gorgeous, I told you that color was made for you.”
“You flatter me.” I wave the compliment off with a small smile. “I’m glad that you seem to be managing fine here.”
Then I look at her properly. She’s flushed, a strand of hair comes loose from the rest, her blouse sitting a half-inch wrong on one shoulder with a quickness to her breath she hasn’t quite smoothed away.
My hand settles at her shoulder. “Are you all right? You look like you’ve been put through it today.”
“It’s been a circus.” She laughs, leaning into the touch for half a second. “Half the calls rescheduled, the quarterly numbers won’t behave, and I’ve been chasing my own tail since lunch. I keep thinking, this is the part where Miss Adriana would have fixed it in an afternoon.”
There’s the girl I took under my wing two years ago, quick and eager and still looking at me as if I hung the moon. Whatever’s gone wrong in my life, the warmth I feel looking back at her hasn’t moved an inch.
“You’re doing good,” I say, and mean it. “Give yourself more credit than that.”
She glows at the praise, the way she always does, and that’s when my eyes drop to her throat, to the silk knotted there. It looks new, the deep blue-green I’d slow down for in a shop window.
“That’s a beautiful scarf,” I point out.
“Oh, this?” Her hand flies to it with a small flutter, and the bright smile holds but her eyes drop for a second. “It’s a little gift from a guy… Nobody, really. You know me.”
My gaze moves past her, down the hall toward the closed door of William’s office, and I remember why I came here.
“Is William here?” I ask and turn to her again. “He didn’t answer my call earlier.”
“Oh, he’s, um… he’s still at the Ardmore meeting.” She gives a little laugh and reaches up to tuck the loose strand back herself, busying her hands. “He texted a while ago saying it will be longer, you know how Sir Gerald can talk. Did you want me to let him know you stopped by?”
Funny, a meeting that conveniently runs late on the same afternoon I followed him. My instincts pull tight in warning, screaming what I already know, and I keep every bit of it off my face.
“No need.” I smile. “Don’t make a thing of it. I’ll catch him at home.”