Chapter 3
By Saturday morning, Olivia’s ankle had improved from a sharp, breath-stealing pain to a dull, vindictive ache that announced itself whenever she put too much weight on it.
She had told Philip it was nothing, which was close enough to the truth if one defined nothing as an injury that could be ignored through discipline, anti-inflammatories, and a determined refusal to limp in public.
Mason had accepted none of those definitions.
He appeared in the kitchen shortly after eight carrying her rehearsal bag in one hand and a pair of flat leather boots in the other.
Olivia, who was leaning against the marble counter with a piece of toast in one hand and the Act Two revisions spread open before her, took in the boots and returned her attention to the script.
“No.”
Mason stopped in the doorway. “You don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“You’re going to suggest I wear those to rehearsal.”
“I’m going to insist you take them with you in case your ankle gets worse.”
“That is the same suggestion in disguise.”
He crossed the kitchen and set the boots on the stool beside her.
Morning light filled the tall windows of their Riverside Drive apartment, brightening the herringbone floors and catching the silver beginning to show at his temples.
He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms, and Olivia resented the fact that she still noticed how handsome he was when he was being unreasonable.
The apartment was an oasis of light and luxury, with tall windows that spilled sunshine onto the herringbone floors and showcased the breathtaking view of the bustling Riverside Drive below.
The crisp white walls contrasted with the silver accents, giving the space a modern yet elegant feel.
It was a place of beauty and comfort, the perfect sanctuary from the chaotic city outside.
“You twisted your ankle yesterday,” he said. “You’re still healing.”
“I caught my heel on loose tape. My ability to walk has not entered a permanent decline.”
“Liv, you could barely make it from the elevator to the bedroom last night.”
“That was after ten hours of rehearsal.”
“That isn’t the defense you think it is.”
She lowered the script and looked at him. Mason had adopted the calm, maddening expression he used whenever he believed he was the only sensible person in the room. It had been useful during contract negotiations and deeply irritating throughout their marriage.
“I need to rehearse in the shoes Serena wears,” she said. “Her balance changes in heels. So does the way she moves through the room.”
“Serena is fictional.”
“Not between ten and six.”
His mouth tightened, though she saw the reluctant amusement behind it. “You do hear yourself, don’t you?”
“Constantly. It’s exhausting.”
Mason rested his hands on the edge of the counter and studied her. “You don’t have to prove anything by hurting yourself.”
“I’m not proving anything. I’m working.” Olivia folded the corner of a page she had already marked twice, then flattened it again.
“If I arrive in orthopedic shoes after one minor accident, the entire room will start watching my ankle instead of the scene. Philip will modify the blocking. Wardrobe will panic. By lunch, someone will be discussing whether the role needs a contingency plan.”
“You have an understudy. That is the contingency plan.”
The remark landed more heavily than he intended. Olivia looked down at the script, where Serena’s lines had begun to blur into a dark block of print.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m aware.”
Mason exhaled and came around the counter. His hands settled at her waist, but he did not pull her toward him until she allowed herself to lean against his chest. The familiar warmth of him weakened her irritation without erasing it.
“I’m not trying to replace you,” he said quietly. “I’m trying to keep you from turning a sprain into something worse because you think pain becomes admirable when you push through it.”
“That is an unfairly accurate description of actors.”
“It is an unfairly accurate description of you.”
She sighed and rolled her eyes, then rested her forehead against his shoulder. “I’ll take the boots.”
“You’ll wear them.”
“I said I would take them.”
“That wasn’t the agreement.”
“It was the only agreement available.”
He kissed the top of her head with a resigned sigh. “You are exhausting.”
“You knew that before the wedding.”
“I thought age might soften you.”
“It has. I used to be much worse.”
His phone began vibrating against the counter behind them. Olivia lifted her head as the screen lit with Lara’s name. Mason glanced at it, then reached over and silenced the call without answering.
“You can take it,” Olivia said.
“It can wait.”
“Clearly not, if she’s calling at eight on a Saturday morning.”
The words carried more edge than Olivia intended. Mason heard it and drew back slightly, his expression guarded rather than guilty.
“She probably wants to ask about your ankle.”
“She has my number.”
“She may not want to bother you before rehearsal.”
“How considerate.”
“Liv.”
There was no accusation in his voice, but the warning beneath it irritated her. She picked up her script and closed it, aligning the pages with more precision than necessary.
“I am not starting an argument,” she said.
“Neither am I.”
“You’re using the tone.”
“What tone?”
“The one that says I’m about to become unreasonable and you’ve decided to be patient with me.”
Mason looked as though he wanted to deny it, but his phone vibrated again with a message. He checked the screen, and something in his face softened.
“She says she barely slept because she feels responsible for what happened.”
Olivia stared at him. “She barely slept.”
“She’s anxious. She thinks she made a terrible impression on her first week.”
“She didn’t make the tape come loose.”
“I know that.”
“Then there’s nothing for her to be responsible for.”
“She noticed it and didn’t say anything.”
Olivia looked down at the flat boots beside her bag. “It’s interesting.”
Mason frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means she has found a way to become the person most wounded by an accident that happened to me.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Olivia said. “Perhaps it isn’t.”
She did not want to become the sort of woman who heard manipulation in every apology.
Lara’s message could be exactly what it appeared to be: an anxious woman afraid of losing a rare opportunity after failing to speak up.
Olivia knew how precarious an understudy contract could feel.
She knew, too, that Mason’s instinct was to reassure people before they could condemn themselves.
What unsettled her was not any single thing. It was an uneasy feeling. It was Lara noticing the loose tape, then centering her guilt so completely that everyone else rushed to ease it.
Olivia disliked how badly she wanted something to explain the tight feeling beneath her ribs.
“She says she’s thinking about withdrawing,” Mason continued. “She doesn’t want to cause trouble between us.”
Olivia looked up sharply. “She said that?”
“She said she feels as though you’re uncomfortable having her there.”
“And you told her?”
“I told her not to make a decision based on one difficult day.”
“You reassured her.”
“Of course I reassured her.”
The answer came too quickly. Olivia felt the first real chill of the morning move through her, though the kitchen was warm with sunlight.
“You didn’t ask why she thinks there’s trouble between us.”
Mason’s expression hardened. “Because she was in the room yesterday, Liv. She heard you ask whether I understood that you were the one who almost fell.”
“I was in pain.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He stepped back. “There it is again.”
“What?”
“The suggestion that because I feel sympathy for Lara, I’m somehow failing you.”
Olivia held his gaze. “I didn’t say that.”
“You keep coming very close. It’s not a good look, Liv.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The apartment around them remained offensively peaceful: coffee cooling in Mason’s mug, sunlight across the counter, the soft ticking of the clock near the pantry.
They had argued in this kitchen before, sometimes about things that mattered and sometimes about the dishwasher.
This felt different only because neither of them could quite name what they were arguing about.
Olivia picked up the flat boots and tucked them into her rehearsal bag. “I need to leave.”
Mason reached for her hand before she could lift the strap. His grip was gentle, and the concern in his face stripped some of the anger from her.
“I am on your side,” he said.
She wanted to accept the sentence without qualification. For most of their marriage, she would have. “I know,” she said, because she still believed it.
At the theater, rehearsal began badly and deteriorated in increments too small for anyone else to notice.
Olivia arrived twenty minutes early and found Lara already seated beside Philip at the main table, both of them bent over a tabbed copy of the Act Two revisions.
Philip was notoriously suspicious of actors who arrived with unsolicited ideas, regarding it as vanity whenever it threatened his authority.
Yet he appeared relaxed with Lara, listening while she pointed to a passage near the end of the hidden-letter scene.
“Olivia,” he called when she entered. “Your friend has had an interesting thought about the desk.”
Lara turned, immediate concern crossing her face. “It wasn’t a real suggestion. I only wondered whether the letter should be visible earlier, so the audience notices it before Serena does.”
Philip tapped the page with his pencil. “Dramatic irony.”
Olivia set her bag down. “That was how they staged the original Royal Court production. They removed it during previews because the audience watched for the letter reveal instead of the husband.”
Lara’s expression fell, “Of course,” she said. “You’ve done much more research than I have.”
“I only know because I saw the production notes.”