2. Luisa
— ? —
Luisa
The dress was armor and I wore it like armor: black, high-necked, not a single thing Alton Buckley could object to.
I’d learned that lesson early. The first Buckley Marine gala I’d attended, I’d worn red, a bright, happy red, because I was young and in love and didn’t know any better, and Alton had looked at me like I’d tracked mud across his Persian rug.
A dance teacher. My son married a dance teacher.
He’d never said it to my face. He didn’t have to. It was in every glance, every tight-lipped smile, every time he introduced me as “Wade’s wife” instead of using my name.
Three years. I’d been married to his son for three years, and I was still “Wade’s wife.”
The gala was held at some historic building on the harbor, all exposed brick and Edison bulbs and waiters circulating with champagne. Buckley Marine’s fiftieth anniversary. The room was packed with investors, board members, politicians, everyone who mattered in Wade’s world.
And Dolores, of course. Dolores in a cream silk gown that had never been within a mile of a sale rack. Dolores with her glossy dark hair and her sad eyes and her hand on my husband’s arm as they worked the room.
Dad’s idea.
I grabbed a champagne flute from a passing tray and posted up near a pillar where I could watch without being watched.
This was a skill I’d developed over three years of these events: how to be present without being present.
How to smile and shake hands and make small talk with people who looked through me like glass.
“There you are.”
I turned. Wade was cutting through the crowd toward me, and for a second, just a second, my heart did the thing it always did when I saw him.
That big body in a tailored suit. The dark hair he’d tried to tame with product.
The way his whole face changed when he smiled at me, like I was the only person in a room full of important people.
“I’ve been looking everywhere,” he said.
He stopped in front of me, a little breathless, a little rumpled, entirely Wade.
“Sorry, Hendricks cornered me about the prototype specs, and then I got pulled aside to say hello to the governor, and-” He ran a hand through his hair, destroying whatever the product had been doing. “I’m here now. Hi.”
“Hi yourself.”
He looked down at my wrist. Frowned. “Your bracelet’s undone.”
“What?” I glanced down. The clasp on my tennis bracelet, the guilt bracelet, I called it privately, had come loose.
“Here, let me-” Wade reached for my wrist, his big fingers fumbling with the tiny clasp. His tongue poked out the corner of his mouth the way it did when he was concentrating on fiddly work. “These things are ridiculous. Who designs a clasp this small? It’s ergonomic nonsense. Hang on, I think I-”
His cufflink caught on the chain. He tugged. A thread gave with a tiny rip.
“Oh, no,” he muttered, staring at the frayed thread hanging from his cuff. “Well. That’s a custom shirt, so that’s fantastic.”
I bit my lip. Tried not to laugh. “Wade.”
“I can fix it. I can definitely fix it. I just need-” He looked around helplessly. “Tape? Do you think anyone here has tape?”
“You’re going to tape your cufflink.”
“It’s a valid engineering solution!”
The laugh escaped before I could stop it. He grinned at me, that goofy unguarded grin, and for a moment it was us again, the us from before, the us who used to laugh at nothing, who turned disasters into inside jokes.
“You’re hopeless,” I said.
“Completely,” he agreed. His hand was still on my wrist, warm and familiar. “Lu, I know things have been-”
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
Alton’s voice sliced clean across the room. Wade dropped my wrist. Turned toward the small stage at the front of the room, where his father was standing with a microphone, silver hair gleaming under the lights.
“If I could have your attention for a moment.”
The crowd quieted. Wade took a step toward the stage, then glanced back at me, an apology in his eyes. I waved him on. Go. This is your night.
I watched him take his place near the front, beside his father. And next to Alton, Dolores. Looking at Wade like he was the answer to every question she’d ever asked.
Alton raised his champagne glass.
“Fifty years ago, my dear friend George Vandermeer and I started this company with nothing but ambition and stubbornness.” Polished laughter from the crowd.
“George is no longer with us, God rest him, but his legacy lives on, in this company, in the ships we build, and in his beautiful daughter, who’s been a member of our family since she was born. ”
His hand came down on Dolores’s shoulder. Proprietary. Proud.
I stood at table nine, not the family table, never the family table, and felt a cold weight settle in my stomach.
“So I want to raise a glass tonight. To two families.” Alton’s eyes swept the room. They did not find me. “One future. To the next fifty years of Buckley Marine.”
“Hear, hear!”
The applause scattered across the room like broken glass.
Dolores glowed under the attention, her smile radiant and modest and perfectly calibrated.
Glasses rose all around the room. Wade frowned, I saw it from across the room, the furrow between his brows, but he didn’t speak.
He didn’t correct his father, didn’t say actually, my wife is right over there, didn’t do anything except stand there with that uncomfortable frown while his father toasted another woman as though I didn’t exist.
I finished my champagne in one long swallow.
The room was watching. They had to be. The wife at table nine, alone, while the heir apparent stood with his ex and his parents like a family portrait waiting to happen. I kept my smile on. I’d gotten good at that. The smile that said I’m fine, this is fine, everything is fine.
Someone asked me about the hors d’oeuvres. I answered pleasantly. I didn’t hear my own words.
On my wedding day, we’d stood in front of a justice of the peace because Alton refused to attend a real ceremony. Just us and two witnesses Wade had grabbed from the street, a dog walker and an NYU student, and I’d worn a white sundress and Wade had cried actual tears when he said I do.
His father didn’t come to our wedding, and I thought that meant we’d won.
I was starting to understand what we’d actually lost.
Twenty minutes passed. I made conversation with a woman from the foundation, smiled at a junior engineer who seemed terrified to be talking to the boss’s wife, accepted another champagne and didn’t drink it.
I was performing, and I was good at it, and underneath the performance I was watching the terrace doors, waiting for the thing I knew was coming.
It came at 9:47.
Dolores, slipping outside with her hand pressed to her mouth. The picture of elegant distress.
Wade, noticing immediately. Excusing himself from a cluster of board members. Following her.
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t need to. This was the script we’d been following for a year, and I knew all the lines by heart: She’s having a hard time. She just needs someone to talk to. I’ll only be a minute, Lu.
I sat down at table nine with my untouched champagne and watched them through the glass, Wade’s hand on her back, his head bent close to hers, all that focused attention he used to give me.
The room wasn’t watching now. It had moved on to other conversations, other dramas. I was alone with my smile and my wine and the growing understanding that patience wasn’t a virtue anymore.
It was a grave I was digging for myself.
I don’t know how long I sat there. Long enough for my champagne to go warm and my face to ache from smiling, long enough to watch Wade guide Dolores back inside, his hand still on her back, and feel absolutely nothing about it.
No. Not nothing. Worse than nothing.
I got up. I needed air that didn’t smell like expensive perfume and betrayal, and a bathroom where I could stop smiling for five minutes. I needed-
Alton’s voice reached me, low and private, meant for no one else.
I stopped just around the corner from the service hallway, hidden by a decorative column, and listened. I’m not proud of it. I did it anyway.
“-her mother’s dying wish, son.” Alton’s voice was a silken knife. “Margot asked me personally to look after Dolores. To make sure she ended up somewhere safe. With someone who would take care of her.”
“Dad.” Wade sounded tired. “I’m married.”
“Marriages end, Wade. It happens all the time.”
“I love my wife.”
“You loved Dolores too, once. You’ll love her again.” A pause. Fabric shifted, maybe a hand landing on a shoulder. “Think about what you owe this family. What you owe George’s memory. What you owe me.”
I pressed my back against the column and felt my heartbeat in my throat.
“Her mother’s dying wish, son. Think about what you owe.”