19. Emma
Emma
He doesn’t come home.
I tell myself that at six, when the light starts going orange over the skyline and the elevator still hasn’t moved.
I tell myself that again at eight, when I’ve reheated the same cup of coffee twice and stopped pretending to read the same page of the same book.
By eleven I’ve stopped telling myself anything at all, sitting on the edge of the couch with my phone in both hands, watching a screen that refuses to light up.
He always tells me. Even before any of this, even when we were nothing but two people circling an old wound, he texted when a meeting ran late, called when a flight got delayed. Silence isn’t something Alex does by accident.
I cleaned the kitchen hours ago because I needed something to do with my hands.
The breakfast we made together this morning is gone.
The ruined eggs went into the trash, the pancakes into the refrigerator, and the blueberries Bee didn’t manage to steal back into their carton.
I wiped the last traces of flour from the counter until the kitchen stopped looking like the place where Alex and I had laughed together on the floor only hours before.
The ordinary morning disappeared remarkably quickly.
My call to him goes unanswered.
So does the next one.
There is no message from Frank. Nothing from Steven. No assistant telling me a meeting ran over or a flight was pulled forward.
Just silence.
Bee sits in the middle of the living room watching me walk between the windows and the kitchen.
“I am not pacing.”
Her tail moves once.
“I’m walking.”
She yawns.
I call Sofia a little after midnight, hating myself for it before it even finishes ringing.
“Hey, Emma, everything okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.” I am not okay, and I feel stupid the second the words leave my mouth, stupid for calling Sofia about a man I’ve known my whole life.
“What’s wrong?”
There’s a voice in the background, low and thick with sleep.
“What time is it?”
Danny.
“I was actually hoping you could give me his number,” I say, “but I guess he’s right there.”
“Yeah, I crashed here with him; it got so late.” No embarrassment in it at all, like this is the most ordinary fact in the world. “Why do you need Danny?”
Under different circumstances, I would have questions.
Several.
Tonight, relief pushes all of them aside.
“Alex didn’t come home.” Saying it out loud makes it heavier somehow, more real than it was sitting silent in my chest. “If he’s out of town for business, he always tells me.
We had a fight, and I just—” I trail off, because I don’t actually know how to finish that sentence without it sounding as pathetic as it feels.
“Hold on.” Sofia’s voice moves away from the phone, muffled, and then Danny’s is there instead.
“Hey, Belle—” He catches himself almost instantly. “Emma. Sorry. Sleep deprived brain.” His voice is rough with sleep, more unguarded than I’ve ever heard from him.
There is a pause on the other end, long enough to tell me Sofia heard every word. I file that problem away for later. Right now, I have bigger ones.
“Alex didn’t come home.”
Silence on his end, just long enough that my stomach drops another inch.
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll call you back.”
“Danny—”
The line goes dead.
I wait. I don’t move from the couch, phone clutched so tight my knuckles ache, and when it finally rings again I answer before the first note of the ringtone finishes.
“He’s in Seattle,” Danny’s voice, steadier now. “He’ll be back in the morning. Nothing to worry about.”
“Seattle.”
“Probably my grandfather called him. The old crank has a lot of whims, and Alex still dances to them more than I ever did.” A faint, tired laugh. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back.”
Relief loosens something in my chest, enough that I almost miss what comes out of my mouth next.
“I’m sorry, Danny.”
“Hey, it’s no bother. Really.”
“No.” I close my eyes. “I mean, for everything. You were just a kid.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath on his end, quick and involuntary.
“You were a kid too. Let’s just put it to rest. Move forward. Yeah?”
My throat closes.
“I’m sorry you got hurt.”
Danny’s voice softens. “If you hadn’t called us that morning, neither of us would be here. Whatever else happened, I know that much now.”
My eyes burn.
“Move forward. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Try to sleep.”
“Ok.”
I feel lighter after I hang up. But the worry doesn’t fully leave, only shrinks down small enough to live somewhere behind my ribs, and I don’t sleep, not really, doze in stretches on the couch instead until the sky starts turning gray outside the windows.
By six I’ve given up on rest entirely and gone to the kitchen instead, because my hands need something to do and my body has never known any comfort older or more automatic than feeding the people I love.
I make Danish.
Eclairs.
Cinnamon buns from Maggie’s recipe, muscle memory doing the measuring before my mind catches up.
A frittata, because Alex mentioned once, months ago, low and offhand like it embarrassed him to want something so simple, that his mother used to make them every Friday before everything fell apart.
Then bacon, potatoes, fruit—far too much food for two people.
I know exactly what I’m doing. This is an apology made of butter and flour because feeding people has always come easier than saying the things that scare me.
When Alex comes back, I’ll explain what I can.
I still can’t tell him everything, but I can tell him the call was not what he thought.
I can tell him I’m not leaving. That much is mine to say.
Whatever else I’m keeping from him, disappearing was never the plan.
Maybe he’ll tell me what he meant when he said we needed to talk about the future.
Maybe we can finally figure out what this is when we’re not hiding inside bedrooms and half-finished conversations.
By the time the sun is fully up, everyone of his favorites covers the island and the kitchen looks more like a restaurant than a penthouse.
I stand there in old clothes with flour on my hands, listening for the elevator.
It finally moves a little before noon.
I’m already at the entrance before the doors have fully opened, and for one full second my whole body gets ready to fling itself at him the way it’s wanted to all night.
Then the doors part all the way, and it isn’t Alex stepping out first.
It’s a woman.
Blonde, tall, dressed like she just stepped off a magazine spread, beautiful in a way that photographs well from every angle.
And I am standing there in yesterday’s leggings with dried flour on my wrist and painfully aware, all at once, of every single thing about how I look.
“Oh my god, something smells so good.” She breathes it in like it’s the first thing she’s noticed. “Actually, your whole house smells amazing, Alex.”
Alex steps out behind her.
My heart stutters.
He looks at me, and I search his face for any trace of yesterday—anger, regret, anything I can hold on to. There is nothing. His expression has been wiped clean, his face hard and unreadable as stone.
“Hi.” She turns to me, hand already extended, easy and warm. “I’m Vanessa.”
I take her hand automatically, my whole body running on pure reflex, some program that doesn’t require my brain’s permission.
“And you are—” she trails off, waiting.
Alex answers before I can.
“This is Emma Clarke. She’s the housekeeper.” His voice is flat, businesslike, the exact register he uses for staff he’s never bothered to learn anything about. “Let her know whatever you need, and she’ll take care of it.”
The word lands somewhere behind my sternum and just sits there.
Housekeeper.
I look at him.
He knows exactly what he has done.
“So which room is mine?” Vanessa asks, already glancing down the hall, and Alex wheels her suitcase forward himself.
He looks at me as he says it.
“I think my future wife should be in my room.” A pause, knowing, cruel with a precision aimed to destroy. “Our room.”
“Oh, you’re such a sweet talker.” Vanessa laughs and punches his arm, delighted, oblivious, and I understand in that exact second that she has no idea what she just watched him do to me.
Future wife.
Our room.
The words refuse to make sense.
My ears are ringing. I don’t hear whatever she says next until she says it a second time, patient, a little amused.
“Sorry.” I shake my head, forcing my voice into something that resembles normal. “I wasn’t listening.”
“I said, can you point me in the right direction?”
She’s already lifted her own suitcase before I can reach for it. Alex just stands there and watches, still as stone, hands in his pockets like this is any other day.
“Yes. Right this way.” My voice comes out steady.
I don’t know how.
I lead his future wife into the bedroom where I slept with him yesterday.
Vanessa sets the suitcase near the dresser and sits on the edge of the bed. She pries off one heel, then the other, wincing.
“Oh my god, these were killing me. Haven’t broken them in yet, but it was a special occasion, so I wanted to wear the good ones.”
She flexes her stockinged foot. “I haven’t even told my friends yet.”
Twenty-four hours ago, I was in this exact bed. His hands were in my hair and his mouth was against my throat, and I told myself, foolishly, that whatever this was might actually survive daylight.
My eyes catch on the ring before I’ve fully processed why my whole body has gone cold.
It’s enormous. A stone built specifically to be photographed, to announce itself before the woman wearing it says a single word.
“Congratulations,” I say, and the word comes out of me on autopilot, hollow and correct.
“It was so sudden.” Something moves behind Vanessa’s eyes, quick and sad, gone before I can decide if I actually saw it. “I’m still processing it, honestly. But everything worked out for the best.”
For who?
That last part sits wrong in my chest, though I can’t say why, and I don’t have room left to examine it, not with the pressure already building behind my eyes like weather.