Chapter 17 Apology Owed
RAFAEL
"Tell them exactly what she did." Sera's voice is steady, but I can feel her hand trembling where it grips my arm. "Don't leave anything out."
I hold her gaze for a moment, then turn back to the phone. The dispatcher is asking for details, and I give them as clearly as I can while watching Marisol struggle against the staff members holding her back. She's stopped screaming now, reduced to desperate sobbing.
"Yes, we need both police and medical support. My wife was offered a drink with an unknown substance added. She didn't consume any, but the woman who gave it to her was splashed with the liquid." I confirm the address one more time. "We'll have witnesses available when they arrive."
I end the call and pocket the phone. Across the terrace, Marisol has gone still, no longer fighting the staff, just standing there with her shoulders slumped and her ruined makeup streaking her face.
The guests who haven't already left are keeping their distance, clustered in small groups near the far edge of the terrace, watching with expressions that range from shock to something colder.
Nobody moves to comfort her. Nobody speaks up in her defense. These are people who've known her for months, who worked with her, who laughed at her jokes at estate functions. Now they stand apart, and not one of them will meet her eyes.
When the police arrive fifteen minutes later, the server stays by the drinks table until an officer comes to her. After speaking to the people nearest us, another officer tells Marisol she is under arrest. She makes no attempt to get past him.
A medical technician takes Sera aside for a private assessment while a colleague attends to Marisol.
I wait out of earshot, with her last words on the phone still in my head.
Don't leave anything out. When Sera comes back, she tells me they've checked her and explained what to do if she feels unwell.
Nobody has told us yet what was in that glass.
I watch Marisol walk toward the waiting car with an officer beside her. She no longer calls my name.
Just before she reaches the vehicle, she turns her head. Not toward me. Toward Sera.
"I really did love him." Her voice carries across the terrace, thin and defeated. "I know you don't believe that. But I did."
Nobody responds. The officer guides her into the car, and she disappears behind tinted glass.
"Can we go somewhere else?" Sera moves closer to me, turning her back on the car. "I don't want to stand here anymore."
"Of course." I guide her toward the house, away from the remaining staff and the few lingering guests. "Where do you want to go?"
"The workshop." She turns toward the east wing before I can suggest anywhere else. "I want to be somewhere that feels like mine."
Before we leave the terrace, I tell the senior member of staff that the warning about Marisol must reach everyone working here. Then I turn back to Sera. "I told people, but I didn't check that the new helpers knew. I should have."
She studies me for a moment, then holds out her hand toward the open doorway. "Come with me."
***
Inside the house, we walk in silence, past the kitchen where someone is quietly cleaning up, past the dining room, into the east wing. The workshop door is closed, and when I push it open, the familiar smell of her work washes over us. Citrus and wood and something indefinable that's just hers.
I close the door behind us.
Sera moves to the center of the room and stops, her arms wrapped around herself. The late afternoon light falls through the windows, catching the glass bottles on her workbench and making everything glow.
"I need to wash my hands." She opens her fingers and looks down at her palms. "I know I didn't drink any. I still feel as if I'm holding that glass."
There's a small sink in the corner. I watch her cross to it, turn on the water, and scrub her hands with methodical thoroughness. The water keeps running after the soap is gone. I stay beside the door until she turns it off herself.
When she's finished, she dries her hands on a towel and turns to face me. Her composure is cracking now that we're alone, the fear she held back on the terrace starting to show through.
"I was so scared." The admission comes out rough, catching in her throat. "When she grabbed my wrist. When I smelled that something was wrong. I couldn't think. I just reacted."
"You did exactly the right thing." I stay where I am, giving her space. "You protected yourself."
"I threw a drink in her face." A shaky laugh escapes her. "In front of everyone. At your gathering."
"You defended yourself against someone trying to hurt you." I take a careful step closer. "Nobody who saw what happened is going to blame you for that."
She looks at me, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Can you just... hold me? For a minute? I need to feel something solid."
I close the distance between us and pull her into my arms. She presses her face against my chest, her hands fisting in the back of my shirt, and I feel the tremors running through her body.
I hold her tighter, one hand cradling the back of her head, and let her shake.
Her stomach rests against me, and I remember the small flicker we watched on the clinic screen.
How am I supposed to stop thinking about that glass?
I press my cheek to her hair and stay quiet.
She needs me here, not lost in what might have happened.
"You're safe." I murmur it against her hair. "She can't hurt you now."
"I know." But she doesn't let go. "I know she can't. I just keep seeing her face. The way she looked when I refused to drink. Like I'd taken something from her."
"I wish I'd reached you sooner." I keep my hand against her back, afraid that if I let go I'll start imagining that glass at her mouth again. "I hate that you had to face her at all."
"I keep trying to work out what I feel." She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes fierce despite the tear tracks on her cheeks. "I feel angry. And scared. And sad, because she used to be my friend, and now I don't know if any of it was ever real."
"I don't know when it changed for her." It would be easy to give Sera an answer that makes those years less painful. I have no right to invent one. "You were her friend. What you gave her was real."
"Then what happened?" Sera's voice cracks. "How does someone go from being your closest friend to trying to poison you at a party?"
I don't have an answer. I'm not sure anyone does. I just hold her closer and let her ask the question without trying to solve it.
After a while, her trembling eases. She loosens her grip on my shirt and takes a small step back, though she doesn't move away entirely.
"I should let my parents know I'm all right." She reaches for her phone, then hesitates. "They'll have heard something by now. News travels fast."
"Call them." I release her reluctantly. "I'll be right here."
I lean against the workbench while she makes the call.
She tells her mother something happened at the gathering, that she has been checked and I'm with her.
She'll explain everything when she gets home, but right now she needs a little time.
I hear her mother's voice on the other end, worried but not panicked, and I'm grateful that Sera has people who love her waiting.
When she hangs up, she crosses to the window, passing her collection of bottles without touching them.
"She knew this place existed." Sera's voice is distant. "She knew I had a workshop. She used to joke about my perfume obsession, call it my 'little hobby.' I thought she was teasing. Now I wonder if she was always dismissing it."
"I heard her dismiss it, too." I leave the workbench and come closer, making myself face what I'm about to say. "And I let her keep doing it. I was so pleased to have someone helping me that I ignored what it cost you."
"Is that what she was to you?" Sera doesn't look at me, but I hear the edge in her voice. "Someone you couldn't manage without?"
The question cuts deeper than she probably intended. I take a breath before answering.
"She was convenient." The honesty tastes bitter. "When I was too scared to come to you, too proud to admit I was failing, she was there offering solutions that didn't require me to change anything at home. I took what she offered because it was easier than facing the truth."
"What truth?" She turns from the window. I have her attention now, and nowhere to hide behind a careful answer.
"That I was losing you." I stay in front of her, with nowhere else to put my eyes. "That every late night at the office, every missed dinner, every time I chose work over you, I was pushing you further away. And I was too much of a coward to stop."
She folds her arms, leaving the window behind her.
"You missed the afternoon you were supposed to come at one." She glances at the bench where I finally sat beside her this week. "The day I was going to walk you through the new formulas. You promised you'd come."
I remember finding her on the stairs before one and moving our time to after dinner. At six I sent another delay. By the time I came home, it was nearly one in the morning, and the first thing I remembered to ask about was Marisol's notes.
"I forgot the workshop." Saying it again feels worse here, surrounded by everything she wanted to show me. "I remembered the papers I needed for the next day and forgot what I'd promised you."
"You thought we could always do it another time." Her eyes are steady on mine. "You thought I'd rearrange my whole day around whenever you decided to show up."
"Yes." I don't try to defend it. "I thought exactly that."
"I asked you to be my partner." She takes a step closer, and I can see the old hurt surfacing beneath the fresh fear. "To share in what I was building. Not to protect me or provide for me or solve my problems. Just to see me. To care about what I cared about."