Julia
Chapter Five
Saturday morning should feel like a gift.
That is what I tell myself when I wake without an alarm, without a calendar reminder, without an email marked urgent by someone who has never learned what the word means.
The apartment is quiet, sunlight slipping through the pale curtains in thin white bands, the city beyond the windows still alive and busy, even on the weekend.
For the first few seconds, I lie still and wait for panic to arrive.
It does not. The absence of it should feel peaceful.
Instead, it feels suspicious.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand and check the screen.
No missed calls. No emails that require an immediate response.
No messages from Mario’s office. No text from my father about lunch tomorrow, no message from my mother asking whether I have reconsidered dinner with the Ellisons next week, no unknown Connecticut number that makes my stomach tighten before I even open it.
Nothing.
A normal person would enjoy a morning like this.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling.
The apartment is too quiet.
During the week, I can pretend the quiet is peaceful and practical.
I leave before the building has fully woken and come home after most reasonable people have already eaten dinner.
I drop my bag by the console table, kick off my shoes, shower, answer the last few messages, and fall asleep with a lamp still on because turning everything off makes the place feel emptier.
On a Saturday morning, with nowhere to be and no one waiting for me, the quiet has room to spread.
I sit up.
The bedroom is tasteful. That is the first word anyone would use.
Tasteful. The kind of bedroom a real estate listing would call serene.
Soft gray upholstered headboard. White duvet.
Pale wood nightstands. A rug I bought because the saleswoman said it would warm the room, though I have never once looked at it and felt warmed.
Most of the apartment is like that.
Tasteful. Acceptable. Temporary in a way I did not intend.
I rented it quickly when I came back to Chicago because I needed somewhere. A safe building. A good neighborhood. Enough space. Enough light. A quiet building with a doorman in the lobby and, most importantly, outside of my father’s influence.
At the time, that felt important.
Now, it feels like I chose a hotel room, albeit one with a lease.
I get out of bed, pull on leggings and an oversized sweatshirt from Yale, and pad barefoot into the kitchen.
The apartment opens into a living room with high windows and a view of other buildings, other people’s balconies, other lives behind glass.
A few boxes sit against the far wall, still taped shut.
I have moved them twice now, from one corner to another, as if relocation counts as unpacking.
I make coffee in the small machine on my counter, which does not hiss, threaten, or require Ricardo Conti’s supervision.
That thought invades my mind a little too easily.
I stop with my hand on the mug.
Ricardo has no place in my kitchen on a Saturday morning.
He has no place in this apartment at all.
He has an office in the same building where I work, expensive suits, a dangerous smile, and a son who has been my friend since I was twenty.
He has an accent that turns ordinary words into something else entirely.
He has the irritating ability to look at me as if he is listening to everything I say and hearing more that I haven't.
He does not belong here.
The problem is that I can still hear his voice.
Ask for something small.
I look around the apartment.
Fine. Something small.
I take my coffee into the living room and stand in the center of it, assessing the space the way I would assess an event room before donors arrived. Traffic flow. Visual balance. Points of awkwardness. Items that do not belong.
There are too many of those.
I move toward the tower of boxes against the firewall and shift them until I find the one I want.
It's labeled GALA/CONNECTICUT.
How efficient, Julia, I think sarcastically. Ever, reliably practical Julia.
I set my coffee on the floor beside me and cut through the tape.
The first things inside are programs. Seating charts.
Thank-you notes from donors. A folder of printed vendor contracts I probably should have shredded before I left.
Everything is neat because of course it is.
Even when I was leaving, some part of me still believed neatness was of the utmost importance.
Beneath the folders is a silver picture frame wrapped in tissue paper.
For a second, I consider putting it back exactly where I found it and closing the box. That would be easy. Cowardly, but easy.
Instead, I pull away the tissue.
Harrison and I stare back at me from beneath the glass. He is in a tuxedo, one arm around my waist, chin angled slightly toward the camera. I am in a pale blue dress, my practiced smile gracing my face.
The photograph is from a foundation gala in Greenwich, months before he proposed.
I remember packing it now.
I remember not wanting to decide what to do with it. I remember telling myself I would deal with it later, when my hands were steadier, and my life made more sense.
Later, apparently, is a Saturday morning in Chicago.
I pick up the frame.
For a second, my hand refuses to move beyond that. Ridiculous, considering I left the man. I ended the engagement. I went back to the perfect home he picked out while he was in DC, packed my things with Dante’s help, and left the ring on the nightstand on his side of the bed.
The hard part is over. A photograph should be easy.
My mother would tell me it is wasteful.
My father would tell me there is no need to be dramatic.
Harrison would tell me I am being childish.
Dante would tell me to chuck it out the window.
The thought makes me smile.
I remove the photo from the frame.
The apartment remains quiet.
Nothing happens.
No one appears to demand an explanation. No one asks me whether I have considered how this looks. No one tells me I am being difficult.
It is just a piece of glossy paper in my hand.
I tear it in half.
The sound is small and sharp. And satisfying.
I tear it again, then again, until Harrison’s perfect tuxedo and my perfect smile are in pieces in my palm. I carry them to the trash beneath the sink and drop them in. Then, for good measure, I dropped the frame in too.
Then I stand there, breathing harder than the task deserves.
“Good riddance,” I say aloud.
My voice sounds strange in the apartment.
Still, it helps.
I wash my hands, although there is nothing on them—it's symbolic—and return to the living room.
I look at the box on the floor. All the remnants of my previous life are in it. I should do something with that, too. Chuck those as well.
I'm supposed to start small. Maybe I should hold off on that until another time.
“Hell, it's not a rule,” I say aloud. “I can do what I want.”
I sit right there on the floor, pull the box close to me, and start pawing through it.
I pull out the gala programs first.
Most of them are harmless. Some are even worth keeping professionally.
Children’s hospital benefit. Legal aid fund.
Women’s shelter capital campaign. Literacy initiative.
I worked hard on those events. I cared about them.
The money mattered, even when the people giving it made me want to bang my forehead against a wall.
I set those in a neat pile.
Then come the ones from Harrison’s orbit.
Campaign dinner.
Policy roundtable.
Private donor reception.
Congressional exploratory committee launch.
My name appears in small print on several of them. Sometimes as event chair. Sometimes on a host committee. Sometimes beside his, which was always the point. Harrison Winthrop III and Julia O’Brien. A clean line connecting two families, two networks, two useful collections of people.
I did not understand, at first, how much he liked that line.
Or perhaps I did understand and enjoyed being wanted enough to ignore why.
I put those programs in a different pile, one I mentally label “trash.”
The cream envelope sits at the bottom of the box.
My fingers still before they touch it.
Thick paper. Soft ivory. My mother called it classic. Harrison’s mother called it appropriate. I remember standing in a stationer’s office in Connecticut with both of them while they discussed engraving, paper weight, edge beveling, and whether the ink should be charcoal or black.
I remember saying charcoal was fine because no one was actually asking me.
I pick up the envelope and slide one finger beneath the flap.
The sample invitation comes out clean and heavy in my hand.
Mr. and Mrs. Patrick O’Brien request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter Julia Catherine O’Brien to Harrison James Winthrop III.
For a moment, I simply stare at my own name.
I hate it. I hate the beautifully printed script. I hate the old-fashioned wording. I hate the stupid charcoal lettering.
I hate everything about it.
I read it again, then put it back into the envelope. My first instinct is to save it. Evidence. Proof. A reminder of the life that I almost had. Reminder to myself not to allow myself to be in that position again. Not to allow a man so much control that he could make me disappear inside his life.
Then I think of my apartment. My shelves. My boxes. My Saturday.
I do not want this here.
I tear it.
This time, I do not stop until the pieces are too small to read.
By the time I finish, I have made a mess on the floor. Paper scraps cling to my leggings. My coffee has gone cold, and scraps float in the cup as well. The tasteful apartment looks less tasteful now, which actually makes me like it a lot more.
I sit amid the mess and laugh freely.
Then, because apparently I have crossed some invisible line into mild rebellion, I order a set of bright ceramic bowls from a shop in Andersonville, a ridiculous print of lemons for the kitchen, and a red throw pillow I am not entirely sure will match anything.
I do not care.