2. Izzy #3
“He was my father.” The crack in my voice splits wide open. “He was my father and I loved him and I didn’t need your flowers or your assistant. I needed you. And you chose a meeting.”
“It wasn’t just a meeting. The whole deal was about to collapse…”
“It’s always about to collapse.” I slide down until I’m sitting on the floor against the bed, my legs suddenly unable to hold me up. “There’s always a crisis only you can solve.”
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them.
“I’ve spent seven years telling myself that next time would be different. That the work was for us. That once you built whatever you were building, you’d slow down and I’d have you back.”
“You do have me…”
“I don’t have anything.” I press the back of my hand against my mouth for a second, then drop it. “I have a big house and a closet full of apology gifts and a husband who sends peonies every time he breaks my heart because it’s easier than actually showing up.”
“Izzy, please. Let me come to you. Let me explain in person.”
“There’s nothing to explain.” My voice is steadier now. “The video doesn’t matter. Sabrina doesn’t matter. What matters is that you were never going to be here.”
I stare at the wall across from me.
“Even if there was no intern and no camera and no tabloid, I would have spent my anniversary alone. Again. Because that’s what you do. That’s who you’ve become.”
“I’m still the same person who married you.” His voice breaks, and for a moment I hear the boy from the kitchen beneath the calm. “I’m still the guy who danced with you in that kitchen, who promised I’d never make you feel like you came second.”
“That guy would have been on the plane.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “That guy would have chosen me.”
“I do choose you. Every day, I choose you.”
“You choose the company.” I rest my forehead against my knees. “You’ve been choosing it for years. I just finally stopped pretending otherwise.”
“What does that mean? Izzy, what are you saying?”
I look at my left hand. The rings catch the first light of dawn creeping through the windows, the diamond throwing tiny rainbows across the floor.
I’ve worn them every day for seven years. They stayed on through showers, through the anniversary he forgot, through nights I cried myself to sleep reaching for a body that wasn’t there.
“I’m saying I’m done waiting.” My voice comes out steady and calm. “I’m done being the woman who sits alone at dinner tables hoping this time will be different. I’m done making excuses for you to everyone, including myself.”
“Izzy, just wait. Whatever you’re thinking right now, just stop. Don’t do anything drastic.” His words are coming faster, edged with panic. “I’m booking a flight right now. I’ll be there in twelve hours. We can talk. We can fix this.”
“You made me promise you one thing, once.” I twist the engagement ring. It catches on my knuckle. “In our kitchen. Twelve hours after City Hall. You made me promise to leave if you ever made me feel like I came second.”
“Izzy, don’t…”
“You said the man who would do that to me didn’t deserve me.”
The ring slides free. Two carats, an upgrade from year three.
The original was thin gold he saved four months for, the one he proposed with on a street corner in the rain.
“You said you’d never give me a reason to keep that promise.”
“I haven’t. Izzy, I swear to you, I haven’t…”
“Goodbye, Wilson.”
“Izzy, please…”
I hang up.
The phone rings again immediately. WILSON glows on the screen. I press decline.
It rings again. Decline.
Three more times in rapid succession, and I decline every one.
Then texts start flooding in.
Wilson: Please pick up. We need to talk about this.
Wilson: I’m booking a flight right now. I’ll be there tonight.
Wilson: Izzy I love you. Please don’t do this.
Wilson: Please.
I turn the phone face-down on the floor and look at the ring in my palm. The diamond sparkles in the morning light, throwing those tiny rainbows everywhere, beautiful and meaningless.
The wedding band comes off easier. Simple platinum, the first thing he ever bought me with real money, year two, when I told him I didn’t need anything fancy. I just needed him.
I just needed him.
And he was never, ever there.
Both rings sit in my open palm now. They weigh almost nothing. A few grams of metal and carbon that represented everything I thought my life was going to be.
My finger looks naked without them. There’s a pale groove in my skin where they sat for seven years.
My hand feels lighter.
I wait for the panic to hit. For the regret, the second-guessing, the desperate urge to put them back on and pretend this never happened.
Instead, there’s just quiet.
My hand feels lighter than it has in years, and that’s what finally breaks me.
The sob comes up from the place I’ve kept locked for seven years, through the lonely dinners and the empty beds and the flowers that said I’m sorry and meant I’m not going to change.
I cry like I haven’t cried since my father’s funeral, since I stood alone at his graveside and pretended I was okay. I cry until my throat is raw and my eyes are swollen shut. Until the sun is fully up, filling the villa with light I don’t want.
Then I wipe my face with the hem of my sweater. I stand up. I finish packing my suitcase.
The rings don’t stay on the nightstand.
I zip them into the side pocket of my purse, tucked away where I won’t have to look at them.
He’s not going to find them here, in this obscenely expensive paradise he was supposed to share with me. That would be too easy. He’d get to grieve in private, far away from everything he threw away.
No.
He’s going to find them at home. On the kitchen island, next to the espresso machine he bought me for my birthday three years ago, the one I learned to use alone because he was never there in the mornings.
I’ll leave them there with a note. Two lines, final, nothing he can argue with.
I zip my suitcase closed.
***
I haven’t taken a real bath in years. There was always one more thing to do, somewhere else to be, some reason to rush. I told myself I didn’t have time. The truth is I stopped letting myself have time.
I run the tub until it steams. I pour in the entire bottle of jasmine oil and sink in up to my chin. Forty-five minutes. The sun climbs over the water and I don’t check my phone once.
It feels like remembering who I used to be.
When I finally get out, pruned and loose-limbed, I wrap myself in the villa’s thickest robe and pick up the house phone.
“The anniversary dinner that wasn’t touched. Could you have it boxed up and sent home with the housekeeping staff? For their families.”
“Of course, ma’am. That’s very kind.”
“How many people worked the villa last night?”
A pause while she checks. “Four, Mrs. Carter. Two housekeepers, the chef, and the server.”
“Would you add a thousand dollars each to their tips? Put it on my husband’s card.” I recite the number from memory, the way I’ve done for years, ordering flowers and gifts he forgot to send himself. “And please tell them thank you. Everything was beautiful. It wasn’t their fault it went to waste.”
“That’s very generous.”
“It’s the least I can do.” I hang up and stand there for a moment, looking at the empty table.
Wilson would have done the same thing, actually. He’s always been generous with strangers. It’s the people closest to him he forgets to take care of.
I walk out of the villa without looking back.