7. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
I woke up that morning and chose violence.
Not the screaming kind. Not the throwing-things-against-walls kind that would give Margot exactly what she wanted, proof that I was unstable, unhinged, unworthy of her precious son. No, I chose the quiet, calculated violence of a woman who refuses to disappear.
Harper had called it giving up. She’d seen the way I’d gone silent at the garden party, the way I’d let Trevor’s words cut through me without fighting back. But she was wrong. I hadn’t given up.
I’d been gathering my strength.
The reservation at Luciano’s took three phone calls and a small miracle.
The same corner booth where Trevor had gotten down on one knee, where he’d fumbled the ring box so badly it had skittered under the table and we’d both ended up on the floor laughing.
They’d been booked solid for months, but I mentioned the name Anderson and suddenly a cancellation appeared. I hated using it. I used it anyway.
The hotel suite was easier. The Langham had always been ours, anniversary weekends, the occasional Tuesday night when we’d needed to remember why we’d chosen each other.
I booked the room with the claw-foot tub and the view of the park, the one where Trevor had once ordered room service breakfast and then refused to let me eat it until noon.
And the dress.
God, the dress.
It hung in the back of my closet like a promise I’d stopped believing in. Deep garnet silk that Trevor had picked out himself two years ago, for a charity gala where he’d spent the entire evening finding excuses to touch the small of my back.
“You look like you stepped out of my dreams,” he’d whispered against my ear during our dance. Our song had been playing. The Very Thought of You. The same song from the night we’d met.
I’d worn that dress exactly once since then. Tonight, I would wear it to remind him who I was. Who we were.
Who we could still be, if he would just see me.
***
I drove to the estate with my heart in my throat and my plan crystallized into a purpose bright and unmistakable.
I would surprise him. I would pull him away from whatever obligation his mother had manufactured, tell him I had plans for us, watch his face light up the way it used to when I’d interrupt his day with a spontaneous idea.
I would fight.
Helena answered the door. She looked at my dress with poorly concealed curiosity, at my face with something that might have been pity.
“Mrs. Anderson. We weren’t expecting you.”
“I’m here to see my husband.” I smiled, and it felt like baring my teeth. “Is he in his study?”
She hesitated. That hesitation told me everything.
“Mr. Anderson is in the garden room with Miss Williams. I believe they’re reviewing some materials for Mrs. Anderson Senior’s upcoming benefit.”
Of course they were.
“I’ll wait,” I said. “Don’t announce me. I want to surprise him.”
She led me to the small sitting room off the main hall, the one Margot used for visitors she deemed beneath her formal parlor but above the servant’s entrance.
I didn’t let myself think about what that said about my place in this house.
I sat on the velvet settee that was designed to look elegant while being profoundly uncomfortable and fixed my eyes on the door.
I waited.
And waited.
Twenty minutes. Thirty. The grandfather clock in the hall marked each passing moment with a sound like a heartbeat, steady and indifferent. I could hear voices somewhere in the house, too distant to make out words. Laughter. Margot’s carrying soprano and another voice I didn’t let myself identify.
At forty-five minutes, I stood. My legs had started to cramp, and the dress that had felt like armor when I’d put it on now felt like a costume. Like I was playing dress-up as the wife I used to be.
The garden room had floor-to-ceiling windows.
I’d admired them once, during a tour Margot had given me before the wedding, one of her rare moments of almost-warmth, when she’d seemed willing to consider that I might be permanent.
The windows faced the interior courtyard, designed to flood the room with afternoon light.
They also made it impossible not to see everything happening inside.
I didn’t mean to look. I was walking toward the main hall, ready to leave, to call Trevor later and suggest we meet somewhere neutral. But my heels clicked too loudly on the marble, and I stepped onto the carpet runner near the windows to muffle the sound, and then…
Then I saw them.
Chloe stood so close to Trevor that a breath could have passed between them.
Her hand was raised, fingers adjusting his collar with the casual intimacy of a woman who had every right to touch him.
She smoothed his lapel with her palm, then let her hand rest there, right over his heart.
Her lips moved. She was saying a private thing I couldn’t hear, a remark that made her smile curve like a cat’s.
Trevor didn’t step back.
He didn’t move her hand. He didn’t create distance. He just stood there, looking down at her with an expression I couldn’t read through the glass, while she touched him like he belonged to her.
I watched for three seconds. Maybe five. Long enough to see that he wasn’t surprised by her proximity. Long enough to see that his hands stayed at his sides, not reaching for her but not pushing her away either.
Long enough.
I turned and walked back through the house, past the confused housekeeper, past the portrait of Margot that hung in the entryway like a warning I should have heeded. I got in my car and drove home with my hands steady on the wheel and my vision perfectly clear.
I called Luciano’s from the car. “I need to cancel a reservation. Anderson, party of two, seven o’clock.”
“Of course, Mrs. Anderson. I hope everything is all right.”
“Everything is fine,” I lied. “Just a change of plans.”
The hotel was next. The woman on the phone made sympathetic noises when I explained I wouldn’t need the suite after all, asked if I wanted to reschedule. I told her I’d call back. We both knew I wouldn’t.
***
The house was dark when I got home. I didn’t turn on the lights.
I sat on the living room couch in my garnet dress, the one he loved, the one he’d picked out himself, the one I’d worn thinking it might make him remember, and I watched the shadows lengthen across the floor.
Evening bled into night.
Night bled into a deeper black.
I didn’t eat. I didn’t change. I just sat there, letting the silence fill all the spaces where hope used to live.
Harper called at eight. I let it go to voicemail. She called again at nine-thirty, and again at ten. The third time, I texted her: I’m okay. Talk tomorrow. It wasn’t true, but it was simpler than explaining that I didn’t have words yet for what I was feeling.
What was I feeling?
Not anger. Not anymore. Anger required energy, and mine had been spent on reservations and dresses and the belief that I could fight for a thing that was already gone.
What I felt was quieter than anger. Denser. It was the understanding, finally and fully, that I had been standing in an empty room calling his name while he stood in another room entirely, listening to someone else.
***
Trevor’s key turned in the lock at four minutes past midnight.
I heard him before I saw him, the soft thud of the door, the rustle of his jacket as he hung it by the entrance, the slight pause when he noticed the living room was dark but occupied. His footsteps crossed the hardwood, and then the lamp clicked on and flooded the room with weak yellow light.
“Jillian?” He stood in the doorway, his face caught somewhere between confusion and concern. “What are you… why are you sitting in the dark?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I was cataloging him instead: the collar that Chloe had adjusted, now slightly crooked. The lapel she’d smoothed. The chest where her hand had rested.
“You’re home late,” I said.
“Mother’s benefit committee ran long. You know how these things drag on.” He moved closer, frowning at me. At the dress. “Is that… are you wearing the garnet dress? Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” I said. “As it turns out.”
“I don’t understand.” He crouched in front of me, trying to catch my eyes. He looked tired, but underneath the exhaustion was a worry that might have been genuine. “Why didn’t you tell me you were waiting up? I would have…”
“I stopped waiting a long time ago, Trevor.”
The words landed between us like stones. I watched them hit him, watched the confusion on his face shift into something rawer.
“Jillian…”
“I made reservations tonight. At Luciano’s.
Our booth.” I kept my voice steady, flat, even though every word cost me.
“I booked a suite at the Langham. The room with the tub. I drove to the estate this afternoon in this dress, the one you love, remember, because I wanted to surprise you. I wanted to fight for us.”
“You came to the estate?” His face was crumbling now, the realization hitting him in waves. “I didn’t know. No one told me you were…”
“The housekeeper said you were in the garden room. With Chloe. So I waited. I waited for forty-five minutes, Trevor, in that little sitting room your mother uses for unwelcome guests, and then I went to find you.”
His breath caught. “Jillian…”
“I saw you.” My voice cracked, just barely. I forced it back together. “Through the windows. I saw her fixing your collar. Touching your chest. I saw you standing there like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like you belonged to her.”
“It wasn’t… that’s not what…” He reached for my hand. I let him take it, because I was too tired to pull away. “She was just adjusting my tie, it didn’t mean anything…”
“You didn’t step back.”
“I…” He stopped. Swallowed. “I should have. I know I should have. But I swear to you, nothing happened, nothing is happening, she’s just…”
“She’s just living with your mother. She’s just eating every meal with your family. She’s just sitting in my chair and touching my husband and wearing those diamond earrings that were in your car.”
“The earrings were… I told you, I don’t know how those got there…”
“I know.” I laughed, and it sounded hollow even to me.
“I know you don’t know. That’s the problem, Trevor.
You never know. You never see. I canceled the restaurant tonight.
I canceled the hotel. I drove home alone in this dress that I wore for you, and I sat here in the dark for six hours, and you walked in asking why I didn’t tell you I was waiting up. ”
“I’m sorry.” His voice broke on it. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know…”
“It’s like you don’t see me,” I whispered. “And I’m starting to wonder if you ever did.”
He reached for me then, both hands lifting toward my face, his eyes wet with a pain that looked real. Like recognition. Like the Trevor I’d married finally waking up to what he’d let happen.
Then his phone rang.
The sound split the silence like a blade. We both froze, both looked at the screen lighting up in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out, and I watched his face as he read the name.
Chloe.
His thumb hovered over the screen. Decline. He just had to press decline.
One second.
Two.
Three.
He pressed it. The call went silent. But I had already seen the hesitation, the fraction of a moment when he’d considered answering. When even now, even with me sitting here in ruins, some part of him had wondered what she wanted.
A quiet thing broke in me then. Completely. A part of me that all his apologies and explanations and reaching hands would never be able to fix.