4. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
The estate’s front drive curved like a question mark, and I’d always found that fitting. Three years of marriage and I still felt like I was asking permission to exist here.
Trevor had left his watch on the bathroom counter this morning.
The vintage Cartier his father gave him before he died, the one he never forgot.
Except today he had, rushing out before dawn for some crisis Margot needed handled.
I’d texted him twice. No response. So here I was, playing delivery service to my own husband.
I let myself in through the side door. Helena, the housekeeper, nodded at me with a look that might have been sympathy. Or pity. Hard to tell the difference lately.
“Mr. Anderson’s in the library with Miss Williams,” she said. “Shall I announce you?”
“I’m his wife, Helena. I don’t need announcing.”
But I paused at the library door anyway. Stood there like a guest.
The laughter hit me first. Trevor’s laugh, the real one, the one that came from somewhere deep in his chest. I hadn’t heard it in weeks. Months, maybe. I’d stopped counting.
I pushed the door open.
Chloe was curled into the corner of the leather Chesterfield, her shoes kicked off and tucked beneath her like a cat settling in for a long stay. Trevor leaned over the back of the sofa, one hand braced near her shoulder, both of them bent over an album spread across her lap.
“Oh my God, your hair,” Chloe gasped, pointing at a photo on the page. “You looked like a golden retriever.”
“It was the style,” Trevor protested, but he was grinning. Actually grinning.
“It was a disaster. Remember when your mother made you get it cut before the Pemberton wedding? You sulked for a week.”
“I did not sulk.”
“You absolutely sulked. You told me my dress looked like a tablecloth because you were in such a mood.”
“Well, it did.”
Chloe swatted his arm, and he caught her wrist, both of them laughing, and something in my chest cracked right down the center.
I must have made a sound because Trevor looked up. His smile didn’t fade exactly. It just rearranged itself into a more appropriate shape. More married.
“Jillian.” He straightened, releasing Chloe’s wrist. “What are you doing here?”
I held up the watch. “You forgot this.”
“Oh.” He crossed the room to take it from me, and I watched his face for a flicker of guilt, of awareness. Nothing. “Thanks. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here.”
“You didn’t answer your texts.”
“My phone’s been in my jacket.” He was already strapping on the watch, already turning back toward Chloe. “We got caught up going through some old albums. Chloe found them in the storage closet.”
“I was looking for a different thing entirely,” Chloe said from the sofa, not bothering to get up.
She stretched like she owned the room. She probably felt like she did.
“But then I found this treasure trove and I simply had to share. Trevor at twelve with braces? Criminal that these have been hidden away.”
I looked at the album still open in her lap. Photographs of Trevor I’d never seen. Trevor at summer camp. Trevor at someone’s wedding. Trevor and Chloe as teenagers, her head on his shoulder, both of them sunburned and smiling at some beach house I didn’t recognize.
“I didn’t know there were photos,” I said.
Trevor shrugged. “Mom keeps most of them in storage. They’re just old family stuff.”
Old family stuff. Twenty years of history I wasn’t part of. Twenty years of inside jokes and shared memories and photographs where I didn’t exist because I hadn’t existed yet. Not in his world.
“Jillian thought my old haircut was hilarious,” Trevor said, and it took me a second to realize he was explaining my expression to Chloe. Interpreting my face for her benefit.
I hadn’t laughed.
“I should go,” I said. “I have the gallery opening tonight. The Halvorsen exhibit.”
Trevor’s face went carefully blank. “Right. Tonight.”
“You’re still coming?”
“Of course I’m coming.” He kissed my cheek, quick and distracted. “I’ll meet you there. I just have a few things to wrap up here first.”
Here. At the estate. With Chloe and the photographs and twenty years of memories that didn’t include me.
“Seven o’clock,” I said. “Red carpet starts at seven.”
“I’ll be there.”
Chloe wiggled her fingers at me from the sofa. “See you tonight, Jillian. I’m so excited to finally see one of these events you used to plan. Trevor says you were quite good.”
Used to. Past tense. The career I’d set aside to become a wife, and now I wasn’t even good at that.
I walked out without answering. I could feel her smile following me all the way to the door.
***
The Halvorsen Gallery had been a client of mine, before. Three years ago I’d coordinated their spring opening, the one that got written up in the design magazines. Now I was on the guest list instead of the planning committee, and I wasn’t sure which felt worse.
I’d spent four hours getting ready. New dress, deep sapphire, the one that made Trevor’s eyes go soft when he saw me in it. Hair pinned up the way he liked. Makeup that took forty-five minutes to look like it took five.
He texted at 6:47.
Running late. Chloe will meet you at the entrance, she’s excited about the exhibit. Save me a drink?
I stared at the message until my car pulled up to the red carpet.
Chloe was already there. Of course she was. She wore silver, a fabric that caught the light and threw it back, and her smile when she saw me was warm enough to photograph.
“Jillian! I’m so glad I caught you.” She fell into step beside me like we’d planned this. Like we were friends. “Trevor said you were nervous about the press. I told him I’d keep you company.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Of course not. You look stunning.” She linked her arm through mine before I could pull away. “Shall we?”
The photographers started calling the moment we stepped onto the carpet. Chloe knew exactly how to angle herself, how to pause just long enough for the good shots. I’d seen models with less camera awareness.
“Mrs. Anderson! Over here!”
Chloe turned toward the voice, smiled, tilted her head.
“Mrs. Anderson, this way!”
She was already looking.
I stood frozen beside her while the flashes exploded, while photographers jostled for position, while Chloe Williams smiled like she belonged to that name.
“Mrs. Anderson is actually over here,” I said. Loud enough to carry. “I’m Jillian Anderson. Jillian Waverly-Anderson. Trevor’s wife.”
A few cameras swung toward me. Chloe’s grip on my arm tightened, just for a second.
“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” she said, laughing. Light and tinkling and absolutely calculated. “Old habits, you know? Trevor and I were practically engaged once upon a time. The name just felt familiar.”
She squeezed my arm like we were sharing a joke. Like I was in on it.
I wanted to scream.
“Let’s get inside,” I said instead, and I hated how small my voice sounded. How petty I felt for correcting her when she was the one who’d done the wrong thing.
The gallery was stunning, all clean lines and dramatic lighting, the Halvorsen family’s contemporary collection displayed like jewels against stark white walls. I’d planned events here. I knew every corner, every sight line, every hidden alcove perfect for catering stations.
Now I was just another guest.
Chloe disappeared into the crowd almost immediately, air-kissing people I vaguely recognized, her silver dress catching the light wherever she went. I found a corner near the bar and waited for my husband.
Trevor arrived at eight fifteen.
He was already talking to someone when he walked through the door, phone pressed to his ear, nodding along, holding up one finger to whoever he’d come in with. He didn’t look for me. Didn’t scan the room to find his wife.
I watched him hang up, shake hands with a man I didn’t recognize, laugh at a remark the man’s wife made. He moved through the crowd like he belonged here, because he did. Old money moved through old money the same way water moved through water, no friction, no resistance.
I was the friction.
He found me eventually. Or maybe I found him. I’d stopped being able to tell who was doing the work in this relationship.
“Hey.” He kissed my cheek without looking at me. “Sorry I’m late. The thing at the estate ran long.”
“The thing.”
“Just some planning stuff with Mom. Chloe needed input on the Foundation gala.”
“Chloe’s planning the Foundation gala?”
“She offered to help. She has experience with these things, and you know how overwhelmed Mom gets.”
I have experience with these things. I wanted to say it. I wanted to scream it. Instead I smiled and let him get me a drink and pretended I didn’t notice when his eyes drifted across the room, tracking silver.
The exhibit was beautiful. The company was suffocating.
By nine o’clock I couldn’t breathe. The press of bodies, the sound of Chloe’s laugh cutting through the crowd, Trevor’s hand on my back just present enough to claim me and absent enough to ignore. I needed air. I needed a mirror. I needed to remind myself I was real.
“Bathroom,” I said. Trevor nodded without looking.
The restroom was blissfully empty. I locked myself in a stall and pressed my forehead against the cool metal door and tried to remember who I used to be before I became invisible.
When I finally looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize myself.
The makeup was perfect. The hair was perfect. The dress was everything I’d hoped it would be. But my eyes, my eyes looked hollow. Tired. Like someone had scooped out everything that made me me and left a shell wearing expensive earrings.
Get it together, Jillian.
I fixed my lipstick. Smoothed my hair. Practiced a smile that looked almost natural.
The bathroom door opened and two women walked in, mid-conversation.
“…absolutely stunning together. I mean, did you see them? Like a scene out of a movie.”
“The waltz was inspired. So romantic.”
“I heard they were practically engaged before she went to London. It’s like fate, isn’t it? Bringing them back together?”
I pushed past them without a word.
The main gallery had shifted while I was gone. The crowd had pulled back toward the edges, clearing a space in the center beneath the massive canvas that dominated the north wall. Music played from a corner I couldn’t see, slow and lilting, not our song but close enough to hurt.
And in the center of that cleared space, lit by gallery spotlights and the flash of a dozen cameras, my husband danced with another woman.
Chloe moved like water in his arms. Her silver dress caught every flash, every gleam of light, turning her luminous. Trevor’s hand pressed against her lower back, the same spot where he’d barely touched me all night, and he was smiling. That real smile. The one I’d heard in the library.
Photographers jostled at the edges.
“Mrs. Anderson!” they called.
Chloe looked up at the camera.
She didn’t correct them.
And Trevor, my husband, the man who’d promised three years ago to choose me, to hold me, to dance with me…
Trevor didn’t correct them either.