Chapter 7
SEVEN
DARCY HAD BEEN jogging for forty minutes, the same route through Brooklyn Heights he had run every morning since moving in, and he came back through the front door still breathing hard to find Elizabeth sitting on the living room sofa with her coat already on, her bag in her lap, and the particular posture of someone who had been waiting and had decided not to pretend otherwise.
He stopped in the doorway.
She looked up. "Good morning. I have been waiting for you."
He pulled out one earbud. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. I need you to take Mia to school today."
Darcy looked at her, his eyes widening in disbelief. Then at her coat. Then back at her.
"It is your turn on the schedule," he said.
"I know."
"We agreed on the schedule."
"I know that too. However, I need you to take her today."
He pulled out the second earbud and wound the cord around his hand slowly. "Where are you going?"
"Somewhere urgent."
"You are a freelance writer," he said. "You work from home. Where could be so urgent that you cannot do a thirty-minute school run?"
Elizabeth's chin lifted slightly. "First of all, you know I hate driving, but yet, I have been driving Mia to school. So, saying that I don’t want to make a thirty-minute school run as an argument does not work. Secondly, where I am going is none of your business."
"It is a thirty minute —"
"And have I not covered for you three times since we started this arrangement?
" She did not raise her voice. She did not need to.
"Three times, Darcy. You have a habit of disappearing on work trips at short notice and I have managed every single time without making it a discussion. I am asking you for one morning."
He said nothing. She was right and they both knew it and the knowing sat between them in the particular way of things that were true and inconvenient simultaneously.
He raised one hand, briefly, in a gesture that was not quite surrender but was adjacent to it. "Fine. I will take her."
"Thank you."
"But I would still like to know where you are going."
Elizabeth stood and smoothed the front of her coat. "I know you would."
"We live in the same house," he said. "If something were to come up, if Mia needed —"
"I have my phone. It will be on."
"That is not what I mean. I am not asking to be difficult. If you are going somewhere and something were to happen, someone in this house should know where —"
"Darcy." She picked up her bag. "I am an adult. I am not obliged to account for my movements to you."
"I am not asking you to account for anything. I am asking as someone who shares —"
"Have a nice morning."
She walked past him toward the front door without offering any further explanation.
***
Having decided to take the day off to rest. Darcy collected the mail on his way back in from dropping Mia at school.
It was a habit he had picked up without deciding to, the same way he had picked up knowing which shelf the good coffee was on and which drawer stuck and that the third stair from the bottom creaked if you stepped on the left side of it.
The small geography of a house that was not his, learned anyway, because he was here and it was in front of him and Darcy had always paid attention to the things in front of him.
He took the stack inside and set it on the kitchen table and put the kettle on.
Most of it was for James and Charlotte.
He had known it would be. It always was.
A magazine subscription James had clearly forgotten to cancel.
A catalogue for a garden centre, which made no sense given that they had no garden, but Charlotte had apparently been on their mailing list and nobody had told the garden centre yet.
A loyalty card renewal from a restaurant on Atlantic Avenue.
A letter from their building insurance provider addressed to Mr and Mrs Fitzwilliam in the particular font of something automated and indifferent.
He put them in a separate pile. He would need to work through them, cancel what could be cancelled, redirect what needed redirecting. It was the kind of task that sat at the edge of the grief rather than inside it, practical and necessary and slightly unbearable for being both.
He went through the rest of the stack methodically.
A bill. A bank statement for Mia's savings account, which he set aside to pass to the lawyer. A circular from a local councillor that nobody had asked for.
And then, near the bottom, a small envelope.
Thick paper. Ivory coloured. The kind of envelope that announced itself.
The return address in the top left corner said only: Ember. In a clean, unhurried typeface, nothing else. No street address. No website. Just the name.
It was addressed to Elizabeth Anne Bennet.
Darcy set the rest of the mail down.
He looked at the envelope. It was sealed and it was hers and he was not going to open it. He was not the kind of person who opened other people's mail. He set it on top of the pile that he’d categorised general, and he went to pour his coffee.
Darcy stood at the counter and drank his caffein and thought about something else but the letter.
He lasted approximately ninety seconds before his curiosity got the best of him.
He picked up his phone and typed Ember into the search bar.
The first result came back immediately. A clean website. Minimal design. A single line at the top of the page.
He scrolled and read quickly.
Exclusive membership. Application by referral or direct submission. Verification of all members. Physical correspondence only for account activation. Curated introductions based on detailed profiles.
A dating app?
Not quite a dating app, the website was careful to say.
A membership. An introduction service. The kind of thing that sent you a letter in an ivory envelope with a clean typeface and called itself Ember and wanted you to feel that what was happening was considered and deliberate and not at all like swiping through photographs on your phone at midnight.
Darcy put his phone face down on the counter.
He picked up his coffee. The mug suddenly felt too hot, so he put it down again.
She had applied to a dating service. Elizabeth had applied to a dating service and they had written back to her at this address, at James and Charlotte's address, at the address where Darcy was currently standing in the kitchen at eight forty-five in the morning with a coffee he could not drink and a feeling in his chest that he did not immediately have a name for.
He picked up his phone again. Looked at the website. Put it down.
It was none of his business. She was an adult. She had said so herself, approximately forty minutes ago, in this same kitchen, while walking out of the front door. Which was true. Which was entirely correct. She owed him no account of anything.
Regardless, something in Darcy’s chest tightened at the thought of Elizabeth on a dating service.
He caught himself, almost immediately, reminding himself that this was precisely the sort of thing he had promised never to concern himself with. There had been reasons for that promise.
There had always been reasons.
Eight years of them.
He had stopped asking, eventually. Two years in, when it had become clear that whatever answer she had chosen not to give him was not one she intended to give at all. He had accepted that. He had moved on from the asking, if not from the not knowing.
And yet—
Darcy’s hand tightened briefly around the edge of the counter.
Seeing her here. Hearing her. The quiet, habitual way she argued with him as though nothing had ever been left unfinished between them. The memory, unhelpfully immediate, of her standing in this same kitchen in a nightgown, entirely unimpressed with him.
It was making something shift.
He did not examine it.
Darcy’s eyes returned to the stack of envelopes; his gaze settled on one in particular. The one from Ember.
Then he moved it slightly to the left so it was not the very first thing she saw, which would make it obvious that he had noticed it, which he was not going to be obvious about.
***
The ladies arrived just before three p.m., Mia came in first, her bag slipping from her shoulder and landing in the hallway with a dull, familiar thud.
“Mr. Darcy,” she called, already halfway out of her shoes.
Darcy looked up from the sofa. “Mia.”
“How was your day?” she asked, not waiting for the answer before moving further inside.
“Productive,” he said. “Yours?”
“Fine. However, I have got an essay due Friday. I will survive.”
“I have no doubt.”
She dropped onto the sofa and reached for the remote, her attention already shifting.
Darcy watched her for a moment, then said, more deliberately, “If you are free tomorrow after school, I thought we might go out. Just the two of us.”
Mia looked up at that. “Out where?”
“The museum. Or somewhere else, if you have a preference.”
She considered it, tilting her head slightly. “Tomorrow works.”
“Good.”
Elizabeth had come in more quietly behind her. She paused near the stairs, adjusting the strap of her bag, though it did not need adjusting.
“Mia,” she said, “take your bag upstairs and change out of those clothes before you get too comfortable.”
Mia glanced at her, then at the television, weighing her options.
“Now,” Elizabeth added.
Mia sighed, but pushed herself up, grabbing her bag from the hallway. “You always ruin the moment.”
Elizabeth didn’t reply. Instead, she grinned playfully at her, as if mocking her statement.
Mia picked her bag and shoe, then disappeared up the stairs.
When she was out of earshot, Darcy’s attention shifted back to Elizabeth.
“Elizabeth.”
She had already turned toward the stairs again. She stopped, one hand resting lightly on the banister, and looked back.
He crossed to the small wooden coffee table where he had moved all the letters, picked up the ivory envelope, and held it out to her. “You have a letter.”
She came back down the step and took it. Her eyes moved to the return address.
For a fraction of a second, she stilled.
Then she turned the envelope over, once, twice, as though confirming something already clear.
“Thank you,” she said.
She moved to put it into her bag.
“Ember?” Darcy said.
Her fingers froze against the zipper of her bag as he spoke.
“A dating website huh?” Darcy said, “I mean, the name is printed on the envelope. It is not particularly subtle.”
Elizabeth looked up at him then, too quickly. “You looked it up.”
“I had a moment and my curiosity got the best of me,” he said.
She held his gaze for a second longer than necessary, then looked away, her attention dropping back to the envelope. She smoothed the edge of it with her thumb, though it was already perfectly flat.
“It is nothing.”
“A service that sends letters in ivory envelopes does not usually deal in nothing.”
“It was Lydia,” Elizabeth said. The words came faster now. “She signed me up. I did not ask her to.”
Darcy watched her as she spoke. The way she did not quite meet his eyes. The way she folded the envelope once against her palm before slipping it into her bag, as though it might otherwise be seen.
“I remember you once saying that joining anything like dating apps were… unnecessary,” he said.
Elizabeth let out a breath that might have been a laugh, though it did not quite reach that point. She shifted her weight, one shoulder lifting slightly as though to dismiss it.
“A lot has changed about me since we were close.”
Her hand went to the strap of her bag again, pulling it higher, more securely than before.
Darcy inclined his head. “Of course.”
She nodded, but did not look at him.
“I am going to go upstairs for a bit,” she said. “I need a moment.”
“Of course.”
She turned before he could say anything else and went up the stairs, her steps even, measured, not hurried but not lingering either.