7. Alexander #3
The tarte Tatin was as good as I remembered, buttery and sweet and perfectly caramelized.
Camille was explaining some discrepancy in the collection, and I was only half-listening, my mind drifting to how I’d explain the delay to Sophia, when one of her asides made me laugh.
A dry observation about one of the old partners.
It wasn’t even that funny, but I was exhausted and the wine was good and for a moment I forgot where I was and what I was supposed to be doing.
That was when I looked toward the doorway and saw my wife.
Sophia was standing at the threshold of my office, still in the dress she’d worn to the vineyard, her coat folded over her arm.
Her eyes moved from my face to the desk, taking in the candles, the open wine, the remnants of the dessert I’d chosen specifically for her.
Taking in Camille, sitting across from me with a fork in her hand and a glass of wine at her elbow.
Her face crumpled.
“Sophia.” I was on my feet before I finished saying her name. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“What does it look like?” Her voice was barely a whisper, cracked and raw. “Because from here it looks like you recreated our anniversary dinner and then shared it with someone else.”
“The food was delivered. We’d been working for hours. It would have gone to waste.”
“It did go to waste, Alex.” She was crying now, tears streaming down her face in a way she never allowed herself in public. “This was supposed to be ours.”
Camille stood, her expression a perfect mask of professional concern. “Sophia, I’m so sorry. I only meant to save the food for Alexander. I should have left it for you both to share. I didn’t think about how it would look.”
“Stop.” Sophia held up her hand, not looking at Camille. Her eyes were fixed on me. “Did you think about me at all before you sat down?”
The question hit me like a physical blow. I thought about the candles I’d tracked down. The wine I’d been saving. The dessert I’d specifically chosen because it reminded me of our honeymoon.
And then I thought about the past hour. The paperwork and the searching and the easy rhythm of working alongside someone who anticipated my needs. The moment when I’d laughed at a joke that wasn’t funny, while my wife was at home waiting for me to keep my promise.
“Sophia, nothing happened with Camille.”
“I know you didn’t cheat on me.” Her voice broke on the words. “Stop defending yourself against an accusation I’m not making.”
“Then what are you making? Because I’ve been trying to solve a crisis that affects your work, and you’re looking at me like I’ve betrayed you.”
“You have. You betrayed our anniversary. You betrayed your promise to be home by midnight. You betrayed the dinner you planned with the candles you tracked down and the wine we were supposed to drink together.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand, an angry, graceless gesture.
“I’m not accusing you of an affair, Alexander.
I’m accusing you of not thinking about me.
Of always finding a reasonable explanation for choices that keep hurting me. ”
“I was working. The situation escalated.”
“It always escalates. There’s always a crisis. And somehow Camille is always there when it happens, and I’m always somewhere else, waiting for you to remember I exist.”
Camille shifted toward the door. “I should go. Let you two talk.”
“Yes,” Sophia said quietly. “You should.”
I watched Camille gather her things and leave, her heels clicking down the hallway until the sound faded to nothing. The candles were still burning on my desk, filling my office with the scent of fig and cedar, the smell of a perfect evening that had curdled into disaster.
“Sophia.” I moved toward her, and she let me take her hands. They were shaking. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time, and when the food arrived, I thought it would be practical to eat while we worked. I didn’t think about what it would look like from your perspective.”
“You didn’t think about me at all. That’s the problem.
” She looked up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted.
“I came back because I wanted to salvage our anniversary. Because I thought maybe we could still have twenty minutes of normal before the night was over. And instead I found you laughing over the dessert you promised me, with candles burning and wine poured, like you’d simply replaced me with someone more convenient. ”
“I wasn’t replacing you. I could never replace you.”
“Then why does it keep feeling like you already have?”
I didn’t have an answer. I stood there in my office, surrounded by the wreckage of my good intentions, and I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make things worse.
“Let me take you home,” I said finally. “We’ll talk about this properly. Away from work, away from everything else.”
Sophia pulled her hands from mine. “I think I need to go home alone tonight.”
“Sophia.”
“I’m not leaving you, Alexander. I just need space to feel what I’m feeling without having to explain it.” She picked up her coat from where she’d dropped it. “Put out the candles before you go. They smell like everything we were supposed to have.”
She left. The elevator doors closed behind her, and I stood in my office surrounded by cold food and dying candles and the lingering scent of a honeymoon we’d never be able to recreate.
My phone buzzed. A message with the last of what they’d found.
I turned it face-down on my desk and let the candles burn.