Chapter 19 – Eleanor
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the sidewalk as the car slowed at a red light, the weight of the day settling into my bones like concrete.
Three fittings, two vendor meetings, and a conference call with the venue coordinator had left me drained, but there was something satisfying about the exhaustion.
It meant progress. It meant my show was actually going to happen.
I was scrolling through Zara’s latest media strategy updates when movement on the sidewalk caught my eye. Two figures walking close together, their body language intimate in the way that only comes from years of shared secrets and comfortable silences.
My mother. And Garrison Thatcher.
Their fingers were intertwined, her honey-blonde head tilted toward his salt-and-pepper one as he pointed out something in a gallery window. She was laughing, the kind of genuine, unguarded laugh I hadn’t heard from her in years. Maybe decades.
“Stop for a minute,” I told the driver, earning a confused look.
The light turned green, but the car didn’t move.
Cars began honking behind me, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene playing out on the sidewalk.
My mother, who I’d never seen touch my father with anything resembling affection, was practically glowing as she walked hand in hand with a man who wasn’t her husband.
Garrison fucking Thatcher. The visual artist who’d been part of my childhood like background music, always there at family gatherings and dinner parties, always making my mother smile in ways that transformed her entire face.
The man I’d secretly wished was my real father when I was eight years old and desperate for someone who actually seemed to enjoy my existence.
A particularly aggressive honk from the car behind me snapped me back to reality. The driver, no longer able to wait, pulled over to the curb, and my hands shook as I fumbled for my phone.
The call connected on the second ring.
“Eleanor, honey, what’s wrong? You sound upset.”
“Where are you right now, Mom?”
A pause. Too long. Too calculated.
“I’m at the salon, sweetheart. Getting my hair done for your show tomorrow night. Is everything alright?”
The lie hit me like a physical blow. I could see her through the windshield, still standing outside the gallery with Garrison, still holding his fucking hand while she lied to my face.
“Right. The salon.”
“Eleanor, you’re scaring me. What’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just…I wanted to make sure you were still planning to come to the show.”
“Of course I’m coming. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Another pause. “Honey, I have to go. The stylist is ready for me. We’ll talk when I get home, okay?”
The line went dead. I sat in the car, watching my mother continue her leisurely stroll with the man who’d always made her happier than her own husband ever had, and tried to figure out why I wasn’t angry.
I should have been furious. She was cheating on my father, lying to my face, carrying on an affair that could destroy what was left of our already fractured family. But instead of rage, all I felt was a strange sense of relief.
Maybe because my mother deserved to be happy. Maybe because I’d always known, on some level, that her marriage to William Beaumont was more performance than partnership. Maybe because Garrison had always been more of a father to me than the man whose DNA I carried.
Or maybe because I recognized something in the way she looked at him. The same desperate, complicated love I felt for Maxim. The same willingness to risk everything for the chance at something real.
The ride home was a blur of Chicago traffic and tangled thoughts. By the time the car pulled into the circular driveway of Maxim’s mansion, the sun had set, and my head was pounding with the effort of trying to process everything I’d seen.
Maxim was in his office, as usual, bent over a stack of papers that probably contained information about people who wanted us dead. He looked up when I knocked, his stormy gray eyes immediately focusing on my face with the kind of intensity that made my pulse quicken despite my exhaustion.
“How did it go?”
“Good. Everything’s on schedule.” I settled into the chair across from his desk, suddenly nervous about the conversation I’d been planning during the drive home. “The show is tomorrow night. Seven o’clock.”
“I know.”
“I was hoping….” I took a breath, steeling myself for disappointment. “I was hoping you’d be there.”
His expression didn’t change, but I caught the slight tightening around his eyes that meant he was about to deliver news I didn’t want to hear.
“Eleanor, I can’t.”
The words hit me harder than I’d expected. I’d known it was unlikely, known that his world didn’t allow for the luxury of attending fashion shows and playing supportive husband. But some stupid, optimistic part of me had hoped he’d find a way.
“Business?”
“Business.” He set down his pen, giving me his full attention. “There are some developments in the investigation that require my immediate focus. But I’ve arranged for additional security at the venue. You’ll have more protection than the fucking president.”
“Right. Security.”
“Eleanor….”
“It’s fine.” I stood up quickly, not trusting myself to have this conversation without saying something I’d regret. “I understand. This is more important.”
“You’re what’s important.”
“Then be there.”
The challenge hung in the air between us, loaded with all the things we hadn’t said, all the ways this life was harder than either of us had anticipated.
I could see the conflict in his face, the war between duty and desire that I was starting to understand was a permanent feature of loving someone in his world.
“I can’t,” he repeated, and the finality in his voice told me the decision had already been made.
“Okay.”
I turned to leave, but his voice stopped me at the door.
“You don’t look well.”
I paused, my hand on the doorknob. It would be so easy to tell him about seeing my mother with Garrison, about the lie she’d told me, about the way my entire understanding of my family was shifting like sand beneath my feet.
But I was tired of being the wife who brought him problems, who added to the weight he was already carrying.
“Just tired,” I said without turning around. “It’s been a long day.”
“Eleanor.”
“I’m fine, Maxim. Really.”
I escaped to our bedroom—the one I’d moved into permanently after the shooting—before he could push further, before the conversation could become something that required honesty I wasn’t ready to give.
I needed time to think, time to figure out what my mother’s affair meant for all of us, time to decide if I was strong enough to handle another family secret.
***
The next morning brought chaos in the form of final preparations, last-minute vendor calls, and the kind of controlled panic that preceded every major event.
I threw myself into the work, grateful for the distraction, for the excuse to avoid thinking about anything that didn’t involve hemlines and lighting cues.
My mother called around noon, her voice bright with forced cheerfulness.
“Darling, I’m so excited for tonight! Is there anything you need me to do?”
“Actually, there is.” I took a breath, jumping into the deep end before I could lose my nerve. “I want you to bring Garrison.”
Silence. The kind of silence that screamed guilt and panic and a dozen half-formed excuses.
“Eleanor, I don’t know what you—”
“Mom.” I raised my hand even though she couldn’t see me, the gesture automatic and final. “I saw you yesterday. Outside the gallery on Michigan Avenue. Holding hands.”
A sharp intake of breath, followed by more silence.
“I’m not angry,” I continued, and realized I meant it. “If anything, I’m happy for you. You looked happier than I’ve seen you in years.”
“Eleanor….” Her voice was small, uncertain in a way that made my chest tight.
“Are you leaving him? Dad?”
Another pause, longer this time.
“It’s complicated, sweetheart.”
“No, it’s not. Either you’re done with that toxic fucking marriage, or you’re not. Either you’re choosing happiness, or you’re choosing to stay miserable for the sake of appearances.”
“You don’t understand….”
“Then help me understand. Because right now, all I see is my mother finally finding someone who treats her like she matters, and I can’t figure out why that would be a bad thing.”
“There are things you don’t know. About your father, about our marriage, about….” She trailed off, and I could practically hear her internal struggle playing out in the silence.
“About what?”
“About you.”
The words hit me like ice water, cold and shocking and immediately terrifying.
“What about me?”
“Eleanor, this isn’t a conversation for the phone. This isn’t something I can explain quickly or easily.”
“Then don’t explain it quickly. Take all the time you need.
But stop lying to me, and stop lying to yourself.
” I softened my voice, letting her hear the love beneath the frustration.
“Mom, I’ve spent the last few months learning that sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do is stay silent about the things that matter. Don’t make that mistake.”
“Tonight,” she said finally. “After your show. We’ll talk then.”
“Will Garrison be there?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because I have questions for him too.”
“Eleanor….”
“I love you, Mom. And I want you to be happy. But I need to know the truth about whatever you’re hiding from me. All of it.”
“I know you do. And you deserve to know. It’s just….” She sighed, the sound heavy with years of secrets and careful silence. “It’s going to change things. Between all of us.”
“Things are already changing. The question is whether we’re going to control those changes or let them control us.”
“When did you become so wise?”
I thought about Maxim, about the way loving him had forced me to confront truths I’d been avoiding my entire life. About Anya and the fierce loyalty of chosen family. About the way violence and tenderness could coexist in the same heart, the same life, the same marriage.
“When I married into a family that doesn’t believe in pretty lies.”
“Your husband’s world is dangerous, Eleanor.”
“So is yours, apparently. At least in his world, people are honest about the damage they’re capable of.”
After we hung up, I sat in my office, staring at the dress Anya had designed for me, the one that was supposed to make me look like I could murder someone and host a dinner party afterward.
Tonight, I would walk into that venue as Eleanor Voronov, wife of a Bratva facilitator, a woman who had claimed her place in a world that was trying to destroy her.
But first, I was about to learn something about my family, my mother, and myself that would change everything.
I just hoped I was strong enough to handle whatever truth she’d been carrying all these years .