5. Nora #2
“-redecorated before the headstone was even set, is what I heard. Charlotte saw the painters going in that same month.”
“That’s nothing. You know they were together before, don’t you? Before the accident. My housekeeper’s sister worked catering for them - said you could feel it across a room, the two of them. And that poor woman never had a clue.”
That poor woman is holding a tray of your empty glasses.
“They say she drove off in the rain. In a state. One wonders what she found out.”
“One does wonder.”
The voices drift toward the dining room. In the dark of the pantry, Theo has gone very still, and his hand is still over mine, and when I finally look up his jaw is tight enough to crack walnuts.
“They’ve been saying that for two years,” he says. “At every party. In every hallway. And he throws more parties anyway, because silence is worse.” His eyes search my face - too closely, far too closely. “You didn’t flinch.”
“Why would I flinch? I didn’t know her.”
“No,” he says slowly. “You didn’t flinch, and everyone flinches at that story. The nanny before you cried in the kitchen the first time she heard it.” He releases my hand - finally, terribly - and picks up the wine. “You listened like someone checking the details for accuracy.”
My heart slams once, hard, against my ribs.
“Maybe I’ve just heard sadder stories.”
“Maybe.” He holds the pantry door open for me, and the light and the noise pour in, and just before I pass him he says it, quiet enough that it lands only on me: “Or maybe one of these days you’ll tell me the sadder story.”
I carry the tray out with my chin up and my pulse hammering and my whole arm still burning where his sleeve touched it.
This is a problem, I think, smiling at a guest whose name I’ve known for a decade. He watches too closely. He stands too near. And the worst part, the truly unforgivable part, is that I keep letting him.
***
Theo catches me in the garden.
The party is winding down. Guests are saying their goodbyes, collecting their coats, their champagne-flushed faces disappearing into luxury cars. I’m standing by the roses - the same roses where I watched Brielle laugh on the day my world ended - trying to remember how to breathe.
“Still standing?” he says from behind me.
I don’t turn around. “Barely. I probably just got myself fired.”
“I doubt it.” He moves to stand beside me. His shoulder almost touches mine. “Adrian won’t let that happen.”
Cedar and rain and warmth coming off him in the cold, and my body leans a half inch before I catch it. I hate myself for the half inch.
He grieved me. He’s grieving me right now, standing close enough to touch, and some starved animal under my ribs wants to close the distance and let him find out what he’s mourning.
“Why not?”
“Because he can’t stop looking at you.” Theo’s voice is quiet now. Serious. “He lost the thread of three different conversations tonight. Refilled your glass twice without being asked. Nearly tripped over his own feet when you walked past him to get more napkins.”
My stomach turns. “He’s married.”
“Yes.” Theo turns to face me. In the dim garden light, his eyes are very dark. “And he’s my oldest friend. And I watched him fall in love once before, with a woman who deserved better than him. And right now, standing here with you, I feel like I’m watching it happen all over again.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not.” He steps closer. Close enough that I can smell his cologne, something warm and woodsy that didn’t exist in my old life. “But I know what I see. And I see a woman who moves like someone I used to know. Who argues like someone I used to know. Who laughs like someone I-”
“Stop.” My voice comes out harder than I intend. “Please. Stop.”
He stops. But he doesn’t step back.
“Who are you?” he asks softly. “Really?”
Your best friend’s dead wife, I want to say. The woman you’re grieving harder than her husband ever did. The ghost you can’t stop seeing because I can’t stop being her.
“I’m the nanny,” I say instead. “That’s all.”
“That’s not all.” His hand comes up, almost touching my face. “That’s not all of it, and you know it. There’s something about you - something that makes me feel like I’m losing my mind. Like I’m seeing someone who shouldn’t be here.”
“Theo-”
“Just tell me the truth.” The words come out frayed, barely holding their shape. “Whatever it is. Whatever you’re hiding. I won’t tell anyone. I just need to know.”
I look at him - this man who is mourning me to my face, who caught the ghost in my laugh when her own husband walked right past it, and who is standing in my garden asking me to destroy everything I’ve built with a single word.
“The truth,” I say slowly, “is that you’re a kind man who misses his friend. And I’m sorry I remind you of her. But I’m not who you think I am.”
I walk back toward the house.
I don’t look back.
But I feel his eyes on me the whole way, and I know - I know - that this isn’t over. That he won’t stop looking. That sooner or later, he’s going to find the crack in the wall I’ve built, and everything I’ve buried is going to come flooding out.
In the kitchen, Adrian is waiting.
“Eve.” He says the name like it doesn’t fit, the same way Theo said it earlier. “About what happened in there-”
“I apologize, Mr. Walker. I was out of line.”
“Adrian.” He moves closer. Too close. Close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes. “And you weren’t out of line. Brielle was. I’m sorry you had to experience that.”
“She’s your wife.”
“Yes.” Something complicated moves across his face. “Yes, she is.”
We stand there for a moment, two feet apart, the air between us charged with something I don’t want to name.
“Goodnight, Mr. - Adrian.”
“Goodnight, Eve.”
I make it to my cottage before my knees give out.