9. Izzy
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Izzy
The canvas is mostly dark.
I’ve been standing in front of it for an hour, brush in hand, adding shadows to shadows. A woman at a window, her back to the viewer, looking out at a city that doesn’t look back. The buildings are cold. The sky is gray. The woman’s shoulders curve inward, folding into herself.
I haven’t painted in four years.
I used to paint all the time.
Before the galas and the charity boards and the endless dinners where I smiled and charmed donors and pretended I didn’t notice my husband checking his phone under the table.
I had a corner by the window in our first apartment where the light was good, and I’d paint for hours while Wilson worked hunched over his laptop at the counter, and sometimes he’d come up behind me and wrap his arms around my waist and tell me I was brilliant.
When did I pack away my brushes and decide that being Wilson Carter’s wife was a full-time job?
I dip the brush in burnt umber and add another layer to the woman’s hair. She doesn’t have a face yet. I’m not sure I want to give her one.
“That’s beautiful.” Helena appears in the doorway of the spare room, a cup of tea in each hand. “Dark, but beautiful.”
“It’s not finished.” I take the tea she offers and wrap my hands around the warm ceramic. “I don’t know if I remember how to finish anything anymore.”
“You’ll figure it out.” She studies the canvas for a long moment. “You always did have a talent for capturing loneliness.”
“That’s a depressing compliment.”
“It wasn’t meant to be cheerful.” She sips her tea. “Your phone rang while you were up here. Caroline Carter.”
My brush stops mid-stroke. “Wilson’s mother?”
“Unless you know another Caroline Carter.” Helena tilts her head. “She wants to have tea with you. This afternoon, if you’re free.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Neither am I.” Helena sets her cup on the windowsill. “But Caroline has always been kind to you. Even when Edward was treating you like dirt Wilson scraped off his shoe.”
She was the only one at those family dinners who asked me questions about myself. The only one who remembered my birthday without being reminded.
“I’ll think about it.” I turn back to the canvas. “I don’t know what she could possibly want to say.”
“Only one way to find out.” Helena pauses at the door. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
She leaves. I stare at the woman at the window and try to decide if I’m brave enough to face my mother-in-law.
She’s not your mother-in-law anymore. Or she won’t be, once the papers are signed.
I pick up my phone and dial before I can talk myself out of it.
The tea room is on the Upper East Side, all white linen and women in pearls who’ve never in their lives checked a price.
Caroline is already seated when I arrive, silver hair perfectly styled, posture straight as a hymn book, a pot of Earl Grey steaming between us.
“Isadora.” She rises and takes both my hands in hers. “Thank you for coming.”
“Of course.” I let her kiss my cheek and settle into the chair across from her. “I was surprised to hear from you.”
“I imagine you were.” She pours tea for both of us, precise and unhurried. “I won’t pretend I don’t know what’s happening between you and my son. The whole city knows.”
My fingers tighten on the teacup. “I’m sorry if it’s been embarrassing for you.”
“Embarrassing?” She laughs softly into her cup. “Darling, I’ve been married to Edward Carter for forty years. I stopped being embarrassed by this family’s scandals before Wilson was born.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I sip my tea and wait.
“I’m not here to defend him.” Caroline sets down her cup and looks at me with those gray eyes Wilson inherited. “What he’s done to you, the years of absence, I won’t make excuses for any of it.”
“Then why are you here?” I press my napkin flat across my lap.
“Because I think there’s a piece you never got.” She folds her hands on the table. “It won’t change what you decide. But you should have it.”
My heart picks up speed.
I set down my cup before my hands can rattle it.
“You know Edward cut Wilson off for marrying you.” Caroline’s voice stays steady, but her jaw goes tight. “What you don’t know is what happened the week before. Wilson told his father he was going to propose, and Edward sat him down in his study and laid the whole kingdom on the desk.”
“I know Edward didn’t approve of me.” I hate how small it sounds. “Wilson never hid that.”
“Approve?” Caroline shakes her head slowly. “Edward despised the idea of you. Never you, he never bothered to learn you. He despised what you represented. A girl with no connections, no family money, nothing to offer the Carter name but love.”
That last word gets in under my ribs. I grip the edge of the table.
“He gave Wilson a choice.” Caroline reaches across and covers my hand with hers.
“Everything or you. The inheritance, the trust, his place in the business, every door the name opens. Edward told him to choose fast, and he said your name with so much contempt that Wilson came out of that study with his fist still clenched.”
The tea room is too small and too warm. I can’t get a full breath into my chest.
“Wilson chose you.” Caroline squeezes my fingers. “On the spot. He didn’t negotiate. He didn’t ask for a night to think. He walked away from every dollar and every door, and he married you at City Hall with nothing, and he never once looked back at what he left on that desk.”
“He never told me there was a choice.” The words scrape coming out. “I knew Edward cut him off. I thought it happened after. I didn’t know his father put it all in front of him first, and he pushed it back for me.”
“He wouldn’t have told you.” Caroline pulls her hand back and lifts her teacup. “Too proud. And too afraid you’d carry the guilt of it.”
“Why are you telling me now?” I wipe under my eye with one knuckle.
“Because I’ve watched my son become his father.” She sets the cup down with a sharp clink. “I watched Edward disappear into that company, and then I watched Wilson do it, and I’ve seen what it’s done to you at every dinner where you smiled and covered for him.”
My eyes burn. I stare hard at the white tablecloth.
“I’m not telling you to forgive him.” Caroline’s voice softens. “What he’s done, the years he’s wasted, that forgiveness is yours to give or keep. I’m telling you he used to know how to choose you. Maybe he forgot.” She holds my gaze, her eyes shining. “Maybe he can remember.”
My throat has closed around everything I could say.
“I should go.” I push back from the table. “Thank you for the tea. And for telling me.”
“Isadora.” Caroline catches my wrist as I stand. “Whatever you decide, you were always too good for him. From the very beginning. I just hoped he’d rise to deserve you.”
“I hoped that too.” My voice breaks on the last word. “For seven years, I hoped.”
I pull my wrist free and walk out of the tea room before she can see me fall apart.
The Village is quiet this time of day, and I just walk without thinking about where I’m going. My feet know these streets better than I do right now, and the whole time Caroline’s words keep playing over and over in my head like a song I can’t turn off.
He chose you. On the spot. He never once looked back at what he left.
I always knew his family cut him off when we got married. I carried guilt about that for years. But I didn’t know they gave him a choice.
I didn’t know he could have had all of it back and he said no. He said no and he chose me and he never even told me.
The street corner appears before I realize where I’ve walked.
Bleecker and Perry. The corner where Wilson proposed.
It was raining that night. He’d made a reservation at a fancy place uptown, booked weeks ahead, and we were walking there under one umbrella when he stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk.
“I can’t wait.” He was already soaked, hair plastered to his forehead, rain running off his chin. “I had a whole plan. A speech. I can’t wait another hour to ask you.”
“Ask me what?” I was laughing. “Wilson, we’re going to be late…”
He dropped to one knee right there, in a puddle, in the rain, holding up a thin gold ring he’d saved four months to buy.
“Marry me.” He was grinning and crying at once. “Marry me, Izzy. I don’t have anything, really, except how much I love you. But I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure that’s enough.”
I said yes before he finished. I was crying too hard to manage anything else.
He slid the ring on my finger and stood up and kissed me while strangers stepped around us, and I remember thinking, this is it. This is the man I’m going to love forever.
I was right. I do still love him. That’s exactly why it hurts this much.
I’m crying on the same corner now, and the wind off the avenue stings the tear tracks on my face. A woman with a stroller swings wide around me. A man on his phone doesn’t notice me at all.
He used to know how to choose me. Caroline said it in past tense.
What happened to us? Which one of us looked away first?
I wipe my face with my sleeve and start walking. My feet know the way to Helena’s without any help from me.
The tears won’t stop. I hate that they won’t stop. I hate that Caroline pried the lid off, because knowing he chose me once makes it hurt worse that he stopped, and now the love and the grief and the rage are so tangled I can’t tell them apart.
Helena’s street opens up ahead. The brownstone with its black shutters, the little iron fence, the steps where I’ve eaten more than one dinner meant for two.
Someone is sitting on those steps.
Everything in me slams to a halt.
Wilson.
He’s hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, head bowed. Jeans, a wrinkled sweater, stubble shadowing his jaw. Two weeks have hollowed him out.
In his hands, he’s holding a frame.
I stop at the gate. My fingers close around the iron and the cold bites in.
He looks up.
His eyes are red-rimmed. He finds me at the gate and goes very still, the frame flat against his chest now, both arms around it.