3. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
Eleanor’s birthday gift is my responsibility this year, because Eleanor’s birthday gift is always my responsibility, because somewhere in the fine print of marrying Zachary Dean there was a clause about becoming the family’s personal shopper and I must have initialed it without reading.
The laptop is open on the kitchen island because Zachary told me to use it. “The jeweler’s website is bookmarked,” he said this morning, already halfway out the door, already late for something. “Just pick something she’ll like. You know her taste better than I do.”
I don’t know her taste. I know what she tolerates and what she openly disdains, and the Venn diagram of those two circles leaves approximately nothing in the middle.
But I open the browser anyway, because this is my job now, because I am good at my job, because being good at my job is the only thing keeping me upright since the terrace.
The jeweler’s name starts with E. I type the first letter and the autofill does the rest, but it doesn’t take me to a website.
It takes me to his email.
Eleanor Dean. Subject line: Re: You asked me to be honest.
My finger is on the trackpad before my brain catches up, and then the email is open, and then I am reading it, and then I am not breathing.
Mother,
You asked me to be honest, so here it is.
I don’t know if I made the right choice.
Juliette is - she’s wonderful, in her way, but she’s not from our world.
She doesn’t understand how things work. She’s too sensitive, too emotional, takes everything personally.
The spark I had with Nicole, that ease, that understanding.
I don’t have it with her. Not really. She’s comfortable.
She’s kind. But I wonder sometimes if I settled.
If I married the woman who was there instead of waiting for the woman I actually-
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. But you asked, and this is the truth: I’m not totally in love. I care about her. I want to be in love. But wanting isn’t the same thing, is it?
-Z
No.
No no no.
This is Eleanor’s email. This is Eleanor’s poison, planted somehow, designed to hurt me. It has to be. I scroll up, looking for proof, looking for the thread header that will show me his mother’s name on the sending line, and instead I find his.
From: Zachary Dean
To: Eleanor Dean
And the date, sitting under his name like a caption.
Two months after our wedding. Two months after he stood in front of everyone we knew and promised to love me for the rest of his life.
I read it again. And again. Looking for a line I missed, a context that turns this into a different email. A joke. A draft he never sent. A thing that doesn’t mean what it so obviously means.
My voice comes out wrong when it comes out at all: “She’s too sensitive.”
The kitchen doesn’t answer.
“The spark I had with Nicole.” I’m reading it aloud now, like hearing the words will make them less real. Like they’ll sound ridiculous out loud, obviously false, the kind of thing I’ll laugh about later. “That ease. That understanding.”
They don’t sound ridiculous. They sound like a confession.
“I wonder sometimes if I settled.”
The word hangs in the air. Settled. Like I’m a compromise. Like I’m the house you buy when you can’t afford the one you wanted, the job you take when your first choice falls through. Settled.
“I’m not totally in love.”
I have to stop reading. I have to stop because my hands are shaking so hard I can barely see the screen, and I’m gripping the counter like it’s the only thing keeping me vertical, and there’s a sound coming out of me that I don’t recognize.
The sink is three steps away. I make it there because I think I’m going to be sick, and I stand there gripping the edge with both hands, staring at the drain, waiting for my body to decide what kind of crisis this is going to be.
It was venting. That’s what this was. His mother demanded honesty and he gave her a performance of it, the way children sometimes do with difficult parents. It was two months in. Everyone has cold feet at two months. It stopped being true.
It has to have stopped being true.
I go back to the laptop. Check the date again, praying for something I missed, some detail that will let me file this away as ancient history.
The date doesn’t move. Two months after our wedding.
Two days before the Fourth of July photo.
I know exactly which photo. It’s hanging on the stairs, part of Eleanor’s gallery of acceptable Dean family moments. Zachary’s arm around my waist. His mouth in my hair. Both of us smiling like we’d just won something.
I walk to the stairs. Stand in front of the photo. And I look at the woman in it, the woman who didn’t know, the woman who thought she was happy.
“You poor stupid girl,” I tell her.
She keeps smiling.
I sit down on the steps because my legs won’t hold me anymore, and the sounds coming out of me aren’t words. They’re just sounds. The sounds a person makes when something they thought was real turns out to be a story someone else was telling.
My phone rings.
The sound is so ordinary, so out of place in the wreckage, that I almost laugh. I pull it from my pocket with hands that won’t stop shaking and Eleanor’s name is on the screen.
Of course it is.
I could let it go to voicemail. I could throw the phone across the room and watch it shatter against the wall and that would be satisfying right up until I had to deal with the consequences.
Instead I answer.
“Eleanor.” My voice sounds almost normal. Almost. “How are you?”
“Juliette, darling. I’m calling about the gift. Have you had a chance to look at the website?”
“I was just doing that.”
“Wonderful. I’ve been thinking about the sapphire pendant, the one in the estate collection. It would complement the earrings Edward gave me for our anniversary, don’t you think?”
I’m sitting on the stairs of my husband’s house, tears drying on my face, reading his confession that he never loved me, and his mother is asking about jewelry coordination.
“The sapphire would be beautiful,” I hear myself say.
Fucking sapphires.
“I thought so too. Now, the setting - I want to make sure it’s not too modern. The last piece Zachary chose had that contemporary bezel setting that simply didn’t work with anything. You’ll make sure they understand we want something classic?”
“Of course.”
“And the chain length. I specified eighteen inches last time and they sent twenty. These details matter, Juliette.”
“They do.” I press my free hand against my mouth, holding in the scream that wants out. “I’ll make sure they get it right.”
“And Juliette - have them gift wrap it in the navy paper, not the silver. Silver photographs badly, and there will be photographs.”
“Navy. Of course.”
“You’re a treasure.” A rustle on her end; I have been completed, filed, moved past. “Honestly, I tell everyone. Whatever else one might say, the girl is organized.”
Whatever else one might say.
I hold the phone away from my face so she can’t hear my breathing change.
“Good.” A pause. “Are you feeling all right? You sound odd.”
“Just a cold. I’m fine.”
“Well, take care of yourself. We need you functional for the birthday dinner.” Another pause, the particular silence that means Eleanor is about to deliver instructions.
“Saturday at seven. I’ve seated you next to Whit Prescott - he’s been asking about the literacy program and I thought you could brief him on the volunteer schedule. ”
“Of course.”
“Wonderful. I’ll let you get back to the website.”
She hangs up without saying goodbye. She never says goodbye. Saying goodbye would imply that ending the conversation was my choice.
I sit on the stairs for a long time after that, phone still in my hand, Eleanor’s voice echoing against the words her son wrote about me six years ago.
I scroll to Eleanor’s reply. I need to see it again. I need to know.
Darling,
I appreciate your honesty. I’ve had my concerns since the engagement, as you know, but I wanted to give you room to discover this on your own.
Nicole never needed any of this explained to her. She understands the family, the obligations, the particular pressures of our life. She would never take things personally because she would never expect things personally. That’s the difference.
It’s not too late to correct course. A quiet separation, a reasonable settlement, girls like her always do in my experience, and we can present it as mutual. No scandal. No complications. You’d be free to make the choice you should have made in the first place.
Think about it. I’m here when you’re ready.
-Mother
“Girls like her,” I say to the empty stairwell. “Girls like her always do.”
I read it three times, waiting for the rage to come, but what arrives instead is recognition. Of course Eleanor said this. Of course she offered to buy me out of my own marriage like I’m a bad investment.
The question isn’t whether Eleanor wanted me gone.
The question is what Zachary said back.
I scroll down.
Nothing.
His mother offered to erase me, and his response was nothing. Not even a no. Not even a that’s my wife you’re talking about. Just blank space where a defense should have been.
I forward the emails to myself. My hands are shaking so hard I have to try three times to type my own address. It’s not strategy. It’s drowning-woman work: because tomorrow I will tell myself I imagined this, and I need proof that I didn’t.
I find him in his study.
The door is open. He’s at his desk, laptop glowing, phone pressed between his ear and shoulder while he scrolls through something. He looks tired and distracted and so much like the man I married that my chest cracks open looking at him.
“Zachary.”
He holds up one finger. The one minute finger. The finger that means his call is more important than whatever I’m about to say.
I wait.
He finishes his call and sets the phone down and his eyes don’t leave the screen when he says, “What’s up?”
“Are you happy?”
That gets his attention. His head lifts, brow furrowing. “What?”
“With us. With our marriage. Are you happy?”
“Where is this coming from?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Of course I’m happy.” He turns in his chair, giving me half his attention while the laptop holds the other half. “Jules, what’s going on?”
“I need to know if something’s wrong.” I grip the doorframe because I need to be holding something. “If there’s something you’re not telling me. If we’re not - if this isn’t-”
“Hey.” He stands, crosses to me, takes my hands. “What’s this about?”
“I’ve been feeling like we’re not connected. Like something’s off between us. And I need to know if that’s in my head or if it’s real.”
“It’s been a hard few months. The acquisition, the gala, all of it. But we’re solid.” He squeezes my hands. “You worry too much.”
You worry too much. The cousin of you’re too sensitive. The family of words that make my feelings a problem to be managed rather than a signal to be heard.
“Zachary.” I pull my hands back. “I’m asking you directly. Is there anything about us - about me - that you wish was different?”
“Different how?”
“Different any way. Different like-” I stop myself before I say it. Different like Nicole. “Like you settled. Like you made a choice you regret.”
Something moves across his face. Too fast to read, too real to miss.
“Everyone has doubts sometimes, Jules. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“That’s not a no.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“Something you’d have to mean. You’re very good at things you don’t have to mean.”
“That’s-” He stops. For one second, one full second, my husband looks at me like a man who has heard the floor creak over the exact spot where the body is buried. “That’s not fair, Jules.”
“Okay,” I say, and the fight goes out of the room, because okay is what I say when I mean I can’t afford the truth yet.
“I want you to say no.” My voice is rising. I can hear it, can’t stop it. “I want you to say you’ve never once wondered if you made the wrong choice. I want you to say you’re completely, totally, absolutely in love with me and there’s no part of you that wishes-”
“Juliette.” His hands are on my shoulders now, his voice gentle in the way that used to comfort me and now just makes me feel managed. “I love you. You know I love you. I don’t know where this is coming from, but whatever you’re worried about, it’s not real.”
“Do you promise?”
He hesitates.
It’s barely a beat. A fraction of a second. But I’m watching for it, and I see it, and it tells me everything his words won’t.
“I promise,” he says. “We’re fine. Better than fine. We’re good.”
“Okay.” I step back, out of his grip. “Okay.”
“Hey.” He reaches for me again. “Stay. Talk to me. Whatever’s bothering you-”
His phone buzzes. His eyes flick to the screen.
“It’s Thayer,” he says. “I have to - give me one second.”
He answers the call. Turns back to his desk. Falls into the conversation like I’m not standing in his doorway with my whole life in pieces.
I wait. I wait for him to remember I’m here, to tell them he’ll call back, to choose me over whatever crisis is happening on the other end of the line.
The call goes on.
In the doorway of my husband’s study, I watch him talk to Thayer’s people about indemnification, one hand loose in his hair, entirely at home in a conversation that isn’t this one. He laughs at something. It’s his real laugh. Thayer’s people get the real laugh.
I asked him if anything was different, and Thayer called, and the answer was which call he took.
I don’t slam anything. I’ve never slammed anything in this house. I just go, quietly, the way I came, which has been the whole marriage in one hallway.
I leave before he notices I’m gone.
That night I sit at the kitchen counter with a marker and a blank note card and I try to write him a morning note.
I’ve done this every night of our marriage. Every single night for six years, I’ve sat in this kitchen and written something small and true and tucked it under his coffee cup for him to find in the morning. It’s my language. My love letter in miniature. The way I say I see you without saying it.
But tonight the card stays blank.
I hold the marker over the paper and nothing comes. Not because I won’t write something. Because I can’t.
Every true sentence I own tonight is unwritable. I found the email. Too explosive. I know what you really think of me. Too confrontational. Are we even real? Too sad.
And I will not put a lie under his cup. I know what lies under things look like now.
I put the marker back in the drawer with the card still blank.
The cup goes out on the counter for the morning, washed and dried and empty-handed for the first time in six years.
I stand in the dark kitchen looking at it. This small white cup that has carried my whole heart every morning of this marriage.
If he notices, I’ll tell him everything.
If he notices, this is real, and we fight for it together.
Please notice.
Please.