Chapter 1
FAMILY FRACTURES
Grant’s fork scrapes the plate and I flinch.
He doesn’t notice. He’s looking at his phone again—tilted at that angle where I can’t read the screen without being obvious about it. His thumb scrolls. His jaw is tight. Whatever he’s reading, it’s not making him happy, but he doesn’t share it with me, and I’ve stopped asking.
“How’s the Wicker Park project?” I say instead, because that’s what I do now. Lob soft questions across the dinner table and hope one of them lands.
“Hmm?” He doesn’t look up. “Fine. Closing stuff.”
Closing stuff. Three years of marriage, and my husband has reduced his entire professional life to closing stuff.
Grant used to walk in the door buzzing—he’d pour himself a bourbon and talk me through every deal, every negotiation, every client dinner where he charmed some investor into signing a contract.
I used to love that about him. The energy.
The ambition. The way he made commercial real estate sound sexy.
Now he comes home at nine and eats whatever I’ve made, without looking at it. Hell, he doesn’t even look at me if he can avoid it.
“How was your day?” he asks, still scrolling.
I set down my fork. “Good, actually. I finally heard back from the Langford Foundation about the grant proposal. They want a second meeting.”
Nothing. His thumb keeps moving.
“Grant.”
“Yeah, I’m listening.” He’s not listening. He’s reading something, his eyes tracking left to right, and I can see the moment the words on his screen matter more than the ones coming out of my mouth because his brow creases—a tiny fold between his eyes—and his lips press together.
“They loved the pitch,” I say, quieter now. Testing. “They want to fund the whole thing.”
“That’s great, babe.”
He didn’t hear me. I just told him something that isn’t true—the Langford Foundation didn’t say any of that—and he’s nodding along to a conversation he’s not in.
The chicken on my plate is getting cold.
I cut a piece. Chew. Swallow. It could be cardboard.
My throat is tight in a way I’m not going to think about right now.
This is the fourth time this week.
Monday he asked me about my mother’s birthday dinner and then walked out of the room while I was answering.
Wednesday he said “how’s the thing going?
”—the thing, like he couldn’t remember what I do—and picked up a call before I finished my first sentence.
Now this. My husband sitting three feet from me, asking about my day with his mouth while his eyes are somewhere else entirely.
“You’re working late a lot,” I say.
Grant sets his phone facedown on the table. Finally looks at me. “It’s the Morrison deal. I told you about this, Nora.”
He didn’t tell me about this.
“Right,” I say. “The Morrison deal.”
He picks up his fork again. “Should close next month. Then things calm down.”
Things were supposed to calm down after the Lincoln Park tower fell through.
They were supposed to calm down after he lost the Lakeshore bid.
They were supposed to calm down six months ago, and instead they’ve done the opposite—Grant has gotten busier, more distracted, more absent, and the explanations have gotten thinner.
I watch him eat. My husband is a good-looking man—dark hair, strong jaw, the kind of face that photographs well at charity galas.
Tailored shirt, good watch. When we got married, my friends told me I’d won the lottery.
He looks up. Catches me watching. Smiles—the automatic one, the one he gives the valet when he hands over the keys.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I smile back. “Eat your dinner.”
The silence between us stretches. I push a piece of asparagus around my plate. He chews. I try to think of the last time we talked—really talked, not this performance—and my mind comes up blank. A week ago? Two?
His phone buzzes against the table. He picks it up fast—too fast, his hand shooting out before the vibration even finishes. His eyes scan the screen. His expression doesn’t change, but his shoulders drop a fraction. Something in his face eases. A softening I haven’t seen directed at me in months.
Then he locks it. Sets it facedown again. “I need to go back to the office for an hour.”
It’s 8:47 PM.
“Tonight?”
“Morrison stuff. I won’t be long.”
He’s already standing. Already carrying his plate to the sink. He rinses it, loads it in the dishwasher, grabs his keys from the counter.
“Don’t wait up,” he says, and drops a kiss on the top of my head. His lips barely touch my hair. The gesture is so automatic it might as well be him locking the front door—just another thing he does on his way out.
The garage door opens. His car starts. The garage door closes. The house goes quiet.
I sit at the table, my hands flat on the wood. The spot where his phone sat is still faintly warm.
Morrison deal. I don’t even know if Morrison is a person or a property.
I clear my plate. Load the dishwasher. Wipe the counter.
The kitchen gleams under the pendant lights I picked out—alone, because Grant was on a call and told me to get whatever I wanted.
I pour a glass of wine and lean against the island and listen to the silence of a house that’s too big for one person and most nights feels exactly that empty.
My phone sits on the counter. I could call him. I could say Grant, I just lied to you about the Langford Foundation and you congratulated me, so what the hell are we doing here?
I don’t.
I take my wine to the living room and turn on the TV and turn the volume up until I can’t hear how quiet it is.
Gran’s house smells like tuberose and old books.
I let myself in with the brass key she gave me when I was sixteen, back when I started coming over after school to do my homework at her dining table while she read the paper and pretended she wasn’t watching me over her glasses.
The door is the same too: mahogany, heavy, original hardware. Gran doesn’t renovate. She maintains.
“Darling!” Her voice carries from the sunroom, clear and sharp. Ninety-one years old and Vivian Hargrove still sounds like she’s chairing a board meeting. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.” I kick off my shoes in the foyer—her rule, always—and pad down the hallway.
The sunroom is flooded with late-afternoon light.
Gran is in her chair—the pale blue wingback she’s had since before I was born—with a throw blanket across her knees and a cup of tea on the side table.
She looks good today. Color in her cheeks, lipstick on, silver hair swept up. Someone’s been taking care of her.
That someone appears from the kitchen with a fresh pot.
“Nora, hi!” Sienna sets the teapot on the table and gives me a one-armed hug, a quick squeeze. She smells like something clean and botanical. “I was just making another pot. Want a cup?”
“I’d love one.”
I cross the room to Gran and lean down to kiss her cheek. She pats my arm—once, twice—but pulls back before I’ve fully straightened up. Quick. Efficient. The way you’d greet a neighbor, not the person you’ve called the best of us since she was old enough to understand what it meant.
“Sit, sit,” she says, waving me toward the settee. “You’re letting the draft in, hovering like that.”
There’s no draft. It’s June. But I sit.
“I brought you macarons from Beaumont’s.” I pull the box from my bag—pistachio and rose, her favorites. “The girl behind the counter remembered you. Asked how you were.”
Gran glances at the box. “That’s sweet. Set them on the table, would you?”
Last month she would have opened them before I finished the sentence. She would have selected one with the deliberation of a jeweler choosing a stone, closed her eyes on the first bite, and told me I was an angel for remembering.
I set them on the table.
“How are you feeling, Gran? You look wonderful.”
“I feel fine.” Clipped. Almost impatient. Then she turns toward the kitchen. “Sienna, darling, did you finish that broth? The one with the ginger?”
Sienna appears in the doorway. “It’s simmering. Another twenty minutes and it’ll be perfect.”
Gran’s face transforms. The tightness around her mouth softens. Her eyes go warm. “You’re a treasure, you know that? An absolute treasure. What did I do before you?”
Sienna laughs—easy, bright. “You did just fine, Mrs. Hargrove.”
“I did not.” Gran reaches for her tea and takes a sip, looking pleased with herself. “That girl before you couldn’t boil water without setting off the smoke alarm. Remember, Nora?”
“Helen,” I say. “She was sweet.”
“She was incompetent.” Gran says it without malice, almost cheerful, and then looks at Sienna again with that glow. “Not like this one. Sienna knows exactly what I need before I need it. Don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I try,” Sienna says, pouring my tea. She hands it to me with a smile and settles into the chair by the window—not the formal chair, the comfortable one. The one I used to sit in.
I wrap my hands around the cup. The tea is perfect—Earl Grey, loose leaf, strong, splash of milk. Sienna’s learned Gran’s preferences fast. She’s learned other things too, apparently. The chair. The kitchen. The rhythm of this house.
“Grant was here yesterday,” Gran says.
I blink. “He was?”
“Brought me peonies.” She nods toward the side table, where a vase of them—lush, expensive—catches the light.
“He comes every week, you know. Without fail. Flowers, conversation. He sits right where you’re sitting and asks about my day.
” She pauses. Takes another sip of tea. “Your husband is a good man, Nora.”
“He is,” I say. My voice is steady.
Grant was here yesterday. He didn’t mention it. He came home, sat across from me at dinner, talked about the Morrison deal, left at nine, and never once said I stopped by to see your grandmother today.
“Gran.” I lean forward. “Is everything okay? You seem—I don’t know. You seem a little off today.”
Her eyes snap to mine. Pale blue, still sharp. “Off?”
“Not off. Just—different. Quiet.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Nora. Why wouldn’t I be?” There’s an edge in it. Faint, but there. The kind of edge that says don’t push this.
“No reason. I just—“
“Sienna.” Gran cuts me off without looking at me. “Would you open those macarons? I want you to try the pistachio. They’re from that French place on Michigan Avenue.”
Sienna opens the box and selects one. Takes a bite. “Oh my God, Mrs. Hargrove. These are incredible.”
“Aren’t they?” Gran picks one up now—now, after Sienna—and bites into it. Her eyes close. “Magnificent. Nora, darling, have one.”
I look at the box that’s been sitting untouched since I set it on the table two minutes ago. The box she wouldn’t open until Sienna was there to share it.
“I’m good,” I say. “They’re for you.”
“Suit yourself.” She takes another bite, then turns to Sienna. “Tell Nora about the garden. Tell her what you’re doing with the roses.”
Sienna lights up, and for the next five minutes I sit on the settee holding my perfect cup of tea while my grandmother and her nurse talk about hybrid tea roses and south-facing exposure and whether the landscaper is overcharging for mulch.
Gran is animated. Laughing. Interrupting Sienna to add details, reaching over to touch her wrist when she makes a point.
This is the Gran I know—the sharp, vibrant woman who fills a room.
She just wasn’t being that woman with me.
I try to jump in once—“I remember when you grew those yellow ones, Gran, the ones that climbed the trellis”—and she nods, says “Mmm,” and turns back to Sienna.
Mmm.
The light shifts in the sunroom. The peonies glow on the side table. Sienna laughs at something Gran says and Gran squeezes her hand—the same hand that patted my arm and pulled away twenty minutes ago.
Something is wrong. I don’t know what. I don’t know how.
My grandmother loves me. She has always loved me—fiercely, completely, without condition.
She told me I was the best of us. She gave me a key to her house when I was sixteen.
She is the fixed point in my life, the one relationship I have never had to question.
But right now, sitting in her sunroom, holding a cup of tea her nurse made me, watching her beam at a woman she’s known for nine months the way she used to beam at me—I feel like a guest in a house that felt like home.