10. Maren #3
“What do you want me to do, Maren? What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to see me. I want you to remember that I was there at the beginning. That I mattered.”
“Of course you mattered.”
“Then why doesn’t anyone know that? Why does everyone think Rachel is your partner?”
“She’s my partner. In business.”
The distinction is meant to reassure me. It doesn’t. Partners build something together. I’m apparently just the woman he married.
“And what am I?”
“You’re my wife.”
“Am I? Because I don’t feel the way a wife would. I feel like a decoration. Like something pretty you hang on the wall when you want to seem human.”
His expression hardens. “That’s not fair.”
“You keep saying that. But you’re not hearing me.”
“I’m trying to hear you,” he says, and his voice is rising now, stress and defensiveness bleeding through.
“But you’re not making sense. I can’t control what a film editor put in a retrospective.
I can’t control what stupid jokes people make.
I’m trying to run a company and keep everything from falling apart, and you’re asking me to, what?
Stop and acknowledge every time someone misidentifies Rachel as my wife? ”
“I’m asking you to acknowledge that this is hurting me.”
“I know it’s hurting you.”
“Then do something about it.”
“What? What am I supposed to do? Pull you on stage and give a speech about our marriage? Make an announcement that my wife did the flowers eleven years ago?”
“Helping with flowers eleven years ago doesn’t mean you built the company with me, Maren.”
The words land somewhere behind my sternum.
I stand there, frozen, watching my husband realize what he just said. His face goes pale.
“That’s not-”
“I never said I built it with you,” I whisper. “I never claimed that - I only wanted you to remember that I was there.”
He says nothing.
His eyes drop to my hands. To the bouquet I’ve been clutching all night.
“Why are you bringing flowers into an argument about our marriage?”
I stare at him. “What?”
“The flowers. Why do you have flowers right now?”
“These are-” My voice breaks. I steady it. “These are your anniversary flowers. Your wedding anniversary flowers. The tradition you forgot.”
The color drains completely from his face.
“Year eleven,” I say. “Ranunculus, sweet peas, rosemary from our garden. I’ve been making you this bouquet every year since we got married. I’ve been writing you cards. And you stopped noticing three years ago.”
He reaches for the bouquet. I’m not sure why, to look at it, maybe. To hold it. But his grip is wrong, his fingers closing around the stems too hard.
“Give me the flowers.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re crushing them.”
He looks down at his hand. At the delicate stems bending in his grip. He doesn’t let go.
“Maren, they’re flowers.”
“They’re from every year we’ve been married.”
“Stop.” His voice is rough. He’s pulling at the bouquet now, trying to find the card tucked among the stems. “Stop making this into-”
“Give them back.”
“I just want to see-”
“You’re destroying it!”
He yanks the card free. The movement tears through the arrangement, petals scattering, stems snapping. Ranunculus heads fall to the floor like dropped coins.
We both freeze.
The bouquet hangs between us, ruined. Broken stems and crushed petals. Rosemary scattered across the floor.
The ranunculus are destroyed.
Rhodes stares at the wreckage in his hands. I can see him connecting it, the dried ranunculus on my nightstand, the first ranunculus he ever gave me, the symbol of everything we were supposed to be.
And then he says the thing he can’t take back.
“They’re flowers, Maren.” His voice is cold and done. “Stop acting like everything you arrange is some sacred contribution. I built this. You decorate it.”
The words hang in the air.
I hear a small sound from the corridor behind us, a gasp, maybe, or a murmur. Rhodes doesn’t notice. He’s staring at me, his face a mask of regret that’s already forming but too late, too late.
“Mare-”
“No.”
I bend down and pick up a single ranunculus head from the floor, the only one that’s still intact. I straighten.
My voice, when I speak, is perfectly steady. Ice cold. The armor I’ve been wearing for years, finally doing its job.
“You’re right,” I say. “I just decorate it.”
I step around him. He doesn’t move to stop me.
“Maren, wait-”
I don’t wait. I walk back into the corridor, past the staff members who are suddenly very busy pretending they didn’t hear everything, past the guests who are already pulling out their phones, past Rachel Vaughn who’s standing near the door with an expression I can’t read.
The ballroom is next. I walk past the arrangements I designed, the flowers I grew, the decorations I’ve been reduced to.
I walk past a reporter who’s already raising his camera.
I walk past everything I’ve given to this man for eleven years.
And I walk out of The Sinclair with my head high and my spine straight and a single crushed ranunculus in my hand.
The last thing I hear before the doors close behind me is Rhodes’s voice, calling my name.
I don’t look back.